When we think about Game of Thrones‘ huge price tag, we mostly think about CGI dragons, White Walkers, and giant battles. But what’s the most expensive single death? It only happened a season ago.
Leaving out scenes of mass death — which I’m sure were overall more expensive, but less costly on a per-death basis — there are a lot of single kills that stick in the mind. Eddard Stark’s death was infamous when it happened, but probably not that hard to film. Viserys’ molten shower feels like it must have been hard to do. Renly’s death by ghost involved a lot of CGI. Hodor’s untimely end is memorable for the mental scarring more than the actual scene.
According to D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who were at SXSW, the most expensive single death was Arya Stark slitting the throat of Meryn Trant — and performing an eye-ectomy.
Benioff explained (via RadioTimes) that the expense was because “She couldn’t really poke out his eyes”. Sure. I assume that means that death by dragons is real?
[RadioTimes via NME]