There is one "Game of Thrones" actor who is not in favor of filming multiple endings for the finale of season 8. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister on the show, said that this move won't be a good and practical decision. The actor expressed his sentiments in an interview with Marie Claire. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau said he does not believe that HBO and the executive producers will go with this plan simply because it will be too costly.
"Do you think that's true? It seems really stupid to me," the star playing Jaime Lannister told the magazine.
"You're not going to waste $100,000 a day to shoot something you're not going to use. It's not going to happen."
The actor, however, admitted that he has yet to the get the scripts for season 8, so he's not yet certain about what HBO and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would actually do.
Why film multiple endings
HBO programming president, Casey Bloys, revealed via The Morning Call that filming multiple endings for "Game of Thrones" season 8 is necessary. Such a highly popular series with resourceful fans need to pull the plug on leaks and spoilers.
"They’re going to shoot multiple versions so that there’s no real definitive answer until the end," Bloys said.
It's not like "Game of Thrones" will be the first show to make this move.
In 2016, "The Walking Dead" allegedly filmed several death scenes with its 11 main actors so that fans won't catch a whiff of who will die in the premiere of its seventh season.
Spoilers everywhere
Over the years, the production of "Game of Thrones" has been constantly challenged to keep information from leaking online. Despite letting the cast and crew sign non-disclosures, however, important details about the episodes still end up on blogs on social media.
Spoiler sites have people who know someone from inside the production who have access to top secret "Game of Thrones" materials. Fans also deploy drones to take videos around the set despite a closed-off set. Drones were actually how fans discovered that the character of Jon Snow (Kit Harington) did not die in "Game of Thrones" season 5.
Drone videos caught Harington filming his battle scenes when season 6 went into production.
Meanwhile, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau hopes that Jaime Lannister will have an uneventful death on the show, should that time come. He hopes his character will die of old age and not be slaughtered while fighting a war or be executed by his enemies.
“Game of Thrones” season 8 won’t likely premiere on HBO until 2019.