Game of Thrones (season 3)
"Game of Thrones" rapidly became a critical and commercial success after it started airing in April 2011. A few days after ratings for the second season's premiere, "The North Remembers", hit a series high of 8.3 million viewers, HBO announced the show's renewal for a third season. Prior to that announcement, there had been rumors and reports that showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss planned to shoot seasons three and four simultaneously. Benioff said that this would be very efficient, but impossible to write.
Game of Thrones
In January 2006, David Benioff had a phone conversation with George R. R. Martin's literary agent about the books he represented, and became interested in "A Song of Ice and Fire" as he had been a fan of fantasy fiction when young but had not read the books before. The literary agent then sent the first four books of "A Song of Ice and Fire" to Benioff. Benioff read a few hundred pages of the first novel, "A Game of Thrones", shared his enthusiasm with D. B. Weiss and suggested that they adapt Martin's novels into a television series; Weiss finished the first novel in "maybe 36 hours". They pitched the series to HBO after a five-hour meeting with Martin (himself a veteran screenwriter) in a restaurant on Santa Monica Boulevard. According to Benioff, they won Martin over with their answer to his question, "Who is Jon Snow's mother?"