The original Game of Thrones pilot, the one that was shot and eventually scrapped for the actual first episode “Winter Is Coming,” was a “complete piece of shit.” That’s according to screenwriter Craig Mazin, who offered his pals, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, some helpful advice after viewing the episode: “You have a MASSIVE PROBLEM.” Approximately 90 percent of the pilot was reshot, and many characters, including Daenerys Targaryen and Catelyn Stark, were recast. Obviously this story has a happy ending (Mazin called the actual premiere “the biggest rescue in Hollywood history”), but the episode is somewhere out there, waiting to be seen and cringed at.
“[Weiss and Benioff] made a lot of mistakes. It didn’t look right, didn’t feel right, had nothing different about it,” Harington recently told the Guardian about the pilot (in which he’s clean-shaven and wears a wig).
The Emmy-nominated actor, who auditioned to play Jon Snow because “it was HBO, and it was American television, so it felt like a huge deal,” still hasn’t seen the episode, but he’s aware that his bosses own a copy. “They say, if I ever piss them off too much,” Harington said, “they’ll release it on YouTube. Every now and then, they send me a screengrab, just as a threat.”
“Winter Is Coming” already contains the worst scene in Game of Thrones history — imagine how terrible the original pilot must be.
(Via the Guardian)
