Academic literature on the topic 'David Benioff'

Abstract This article engages the metaphor of showrunner as auteur to examine freedom of expression in television. News articles offer the metaphor of showrunner as auteur, with Hollywood journalists discussing the writer-producers of the new Golden Age of Television. Media convergence, including cable and digital technologies, has disrupted traditional TV organisations and power brokers, bringing about a renaissance. Jenkins (2006) challenges scholars to see media convergence in terms of voice and participation, rather than technology. Following Jenkins, this study engages auteur theory, and Marshall McLuhan’s analysis of the medium and the message, to better understand TV showrunners. Critical insights from Marx and Bourdieu are considered with regard to the interplay of cultural and economic forces. The analysis compares earlier film directors-Jim Jarmusch and the Coen Brothers-with showrunners of the cable and digital era, including David Chase, the Wachowskis, David Benioff, and Diablo Cody. Because of disruptive technologies, TV showrunners are able to break free from media restraints and bridge the culture/economy binary that structures TV as a field of production. No longer bound by broadcast censorship and scheduled programming, TV showrunners are producing shows that express their signature messages, transforming TV into a cinematic experience.

Abstract On-going public health surveillance efforts are critical for understanding of the impact and outcomes of thalassemias. California implemented newborn screening (NBS) for beta thalassemia in 1990 and for alpha thalassemia and hemoglobin H (HbH) in 1999; over 99% of all live births are screened. This program has identified hundreds of newborns with these life-threatening disorders, and has led to improved care and outcomes. However the impact of immigration and state-to-state migration of high-risk populations is unknown, and this limits understanding of the prevalence of thalassemia in California. The National Heart, Lung and Blood Institute (NHLBI)-funded and Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)-directed Registry and Surveillance System for Hemoglobinopathies (RuSH) cooperative agreement collected and linked population-based surveillance data in seven states from a variety of data sources for years 2004-2008. In California, these data included case reports of patients from large specialty treatment centers – Children’s Hospital Los Angeles and UCSF Benioff Children’s Hospital Oakland. In a subsequent CDC cooperative agreement, Public Health Research, Epidemiology and Surveillance in Hemoglobinopathies (PHRESH), California collected additional case reports from four treatment centers: University of California (UC) Davis Medical Center, UC Irvine Medical Center, UC San Francisco Medical Center and UC San Diego Rady Children’s Hospital. We linked reported cases born 1990-2008 to NBS hemoglobinopathy registry thalassemia cases using date of birth, sex, diagnosis and name. There were 273 treatment center reported cases born during the NBS time frame (i.e., 1990-2008 for beta thalassemia, 1999-2008 for alpha thalassemia), including 113 HbH, 46 beta thalassemia major, 20 HbH/Constant Spring, 17 beta thalassemia intermedia, 26 other beta thalassemia, 3 alpha thalassemia major and 48 cases with unknown or unreported genotype. Of the 225 with known genotype, 62% were definite links to the NBS registry, an additional 16% were likely matches (same date of birth, sex and genotype with no other match for that registry case, but different surname) and 21% had no match in the registry. Treatment center reported cases with known genotype not in the NBS registry were more likely to be older (45% unlinked in the oldest age group vs. 12% unlinked in the youngest group) and for 4% (n = 8) of linked cases the treatment center diagnosis differed significantly from the NBS diagnosis. Among the 48 reported cases with unknown genotype, only nine linked to registry cases. Without confirmatory testing, it is unknown whether these cases have thalassemia trait or benign forms of hemoglobin disorders (e.g., Hemoglobin EE) or any form of blood disorder, so interpretation of the lack of linkage among these cases is difficult. Table 1 shows proportions of cases linked (definite and likely matches) and unlinked with the registry by genotype and year. Linked cases from these six treatment centers represented 23% of all NBS registry thalassemia cases for the relevant time period. While California’s strong NBS program is effectively capturing incidence of thalassemias at birth, these data show a high number of cases born out of state or otherwise undiagnosed that may represent migration to the state of high risk populations. These data also do not capture the number of NBS-identified infants who moved out of state during this time period. On-going population-based surveillance for thalassemia is important to monitor changes in prevalence and outcomes among those affected, and informs development of standards of care, policy and advocacy efforts. This work was supported by the CDC and the NHLBI, cooperative agreement numbers U50DD000568 and U50DD001008. Abstract 4855. Table 1: Proportion of Eligible Thalassemia Cases Reported by Treatment Centers Linked to NBS Registry Cases – California, 1990-2009 Unlinked Cases Treatment Center Reported Genotype/Diagnosis Years Screening Begun Total Eligible Treatment Center Cases Linked to NBS Registry 1990-1994 1995-1999 2000-2004 2005-2008 Hemoglobin H 1999 113 105 -- 3 4 1 Hemoglobin H/Constant Spr. 1999 20 16 -- 1 1 2 α thalassemia major 1999 3 3 -- 0 0 0 β thalassemia major 1990 46 27 7 9 2 1 β thalassemia intermedia 1990 17 7 2 4 2 2 β thalassemia other 1990 26 19 1 2 1 3 Total Known Genotype 225 177 10 19 10 9 Genotype unreported -- 48 9 4 10 17 8 Total Reported Cases 273 186 14 29 27 17 Disclosures No relevant conflicts of interest to declare.

La violencia sexual se ha convertido en el asunto vertebrador de la cuarta ola feminista; por ello, las industrias culturales, los medios de comunicación y las redes sociales son lugares a los que debemos mirar para analizar y discutir esta violencia, ya sea porque reproducen la denominada cultura de la violación o porque se resisten a ella. Este artículo problematiza la representación de la violencia sexual en el texto audiovisual Juego de tronos (HBO, 2011-2019) a partir del estudio de tres episodios clave, en los que son violadas tres protagonistas: Daenerys Targaryen, Cersei Lannister y Sansa Stark. Se ha elegido esta ficción televisiva por su repercusión cultural y por las cifras de audiencia, que la han convertido en una de las series más vista de la historia en América Latina y el resto del mundo. El análisis desde la perspectiva de género permite sostener que, si bien se perciben ciertos cambios desde la primera de las agresiones hasta la última, en todos los casos se elige un enfoque que o erotiza la violencia sexual o se inscribe en un paradigma de idealización del amor romántico, o maltrata a las mujeres como prerrequisito para su empoderamiento. En este sentido, las conclusiones demuestran que la ficción de David Benioff y D. B. Weiss, a diferencia de la obra literaria de R. R. Martin en la que se basa, utiliza la violencia sexual como un recurso narrativo, instrumentalizando la violencia patriarcal con el único objetivo de impactar en la audiencia.

Game of Thrones (GoT) has become the most popular way of referring to a universe that was previously known under the title A Song of Ice and Fire by fans of fantasy novels. Indeed, thanks to its huge success, the TV series is now the most common entry into what is today a complex narrative constellation. Game of Thrones began as a series of five novels written by George R. R. Martin (first published in 1996). It was adapted as a TV series by David Benioff and D.B. Weiss for HBO in 2011, as a comic book series (2011—2014), several video games (Blood of Dragons, 2007; A Game of Thrones: Genesis, 2011; Game of Thrones, 2012; Game of Thrones Ascent, 2013; Game of Thrones, 2014), as well as several prequel novellas, a card game (A Game of Thrones: The Card Game, 2002), and a strategy board game (2003), not to mention the promotional transmedia developed by Campfire to bring the novels’ fans to the TV series. Thus, the GoT ensemble does indeed look like a form of transmedia, at least at first sight.Game of Thrones’ UniverseGenerally, definitions of transmedia assemble three elements. First, transmedia occurs when the content is developed on several media, “with each new text making a distinctive and valuable contribution to the whole. … Each franchise entry needs to be self-contained so you don’t need to have seen the film to enjoy the game, and vice versa” (Jenkins 97-98). The second component is the narrative world. The authors of Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États notice that transmedia stories “are in some cases reduced to a plain link between two contents on two media, with no overall vision” (Collective 4). They consider these ensembles weak. For Gambarato, the main point of transmedia is “the worldbuilding experience, unfolding content and generating the possibilities for the story to evolve with new and pertinent content,” what Jenkins called “worldmaking” (116). The third ingredient is the audience. As the narrative extends itself over several platforms, consumers’ participation is essential. “To fully experience any fictional world, consumers must assume the role of hunters and gatherers, chasing down bits of the story across media channels” (Jenkins 21).The GoT constellation does not precisely match this definition. In the canonical example examined by Jenkins, The Matrix, the whole was designed from the beginning of the project. That was not the case for GoT, as the transmedia development clearly happened once the TV series had become a success. Not every entry in this ensemble unfolds new aspects of the world, as the TV series is an adaptation of the novels (until the sixth season when it overtook the books). Not every component is self-contained, as the novels and TV series are at the narrative system’s centre. This narrative ensemble more closely matches the notion of “modèle satellitaire” conceived by Saint-Gelais, where one element is the first chronologically and hierarchically. However, this statement does not devalue the GoT constellation, as the canonical definition is rarely actualized (Sepulchre “La Constellation Transmédiatique,” Philipps, Gambarato “Transmedia”), and as transmedia around TV series are generally developed after the first season, once the audience is stabilized. What is most noticeable about GoT is the fact that the TV series has probably replaced the novels as the centre of the ensemble.Under the influence of Jenkins, research on transmedia has often come to be related to fan studies. In this work, he describes very active and connected users. Research in game studies also shows that gamers are creative and form communities (Berry 155-207). However, the majority of these studies focused on hardcore fans or hardcore gamers (Bourdaa; Chen; Davis; Jenkins; Peyron; Stein). Usual users are less studied, especially for such transmedia practices.Main Question and MethodologyDue to its configuration, and the wide spectrum of users’ different levels of involvement, the GoT constellation offers an occasion to confront two audiences and their practices. GoT transmedia clearly targets both fiction lovers and gamers. The success of the franchise has led to heavy consumption of transmedia elements, even by fans who had never approached transmedia before, and may allow us to move beyond the classical analysis. That’s why, in that preliminary research, by comparing TV series viewers in general with a quite specific part of them, ordinary gamers of the videogame GOT Ascent, we aim to evaluate transmedia use in the GOT community. The results on viewers are part of a broader research project on TV series and transmedia. The originality of this study focuses on ordinary viewers, not fans. The goal is to understand if they are familiar with transmedia, if they develop transmedia practices, and why. The paper is based on 52 semi-structured interviews conducted in 2012 (11) and 2013 (41). Consumers of fictional extensions of TV series and fans of TV series were selected. The respondents are around twenty years old, university students, white, mostly female (42 women, 10 men), and are not representative outside the case study. Therefore, the purpose of this first empirical sample was simply to access ordinary GOT viewers’ behaviours, and to elaborate an initial landscape of their use of different media in the same world.After that, we focused our analysis on one specific community, a subset of the GOT’s universe’s users, that is, players of the GoT Ascent videogame (we use “gamers” as synonym for “players” and “users”). Through this online participative observation, we try to analyse the players’ attitudes, and evaluate the nature of their involvement from a user perspective (Servais). Focusing on one specific medium in the GOT constellation should allow us to further flesh out the general panorama on transmedia, by exploring involvement in one particular device more deeply. Our purpose in that is to identify whether the players are transmedia users, and so GoT fans, or if they are firstly players. During a three month in-game ethnography, in June-August 2013, we played Aren Gorn, affiliated to House Tyrell, level 91, and member of “The Winter is Dark and Full of Terrors” Alliance (2500 members). Following an in-game ethnography (Boellstorff 123-134), we explored gamers’ playing attitudes inside the interface.The Users, TV Series, and TransmediaThe respondents usually do not know what transmedia is, even if a lot of them (36) practice it. Those who are completely unaware that a narrative world can be spread over several media are rare. Only ten of them engage in fan practices (cosplay, a kind of costuming community, fan-fiction, and fan-vidding, that is fans who write fiction or make remix videos set in the world they love), which tends to show that transmedia does not only concern fans.Most of the ordinary viewers are readers, as 23 of them cite books (True Blood, Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars, Les Piliers de la Terre), one reads a recipe book (Plus Belle la Vie), and seven consume comics (The Walking Dead, Supernatural). They do not distinguish between novelisation (the novel adapted from a TV series) and the original book. Other media are also consumed, however a lot less: animation series, special episodes on the Internet, music, movies, websites (blogs, fictional websites), factual websites (about the story, the production, actors), fan-fiction, and cosplay.Transmedia does not seem to be a strong experience. Céline and Ioana respectively read the novels adapted from Plus Belle la Vie and Gossip Girl, but don’t like them. “It is written like a script … There’s no description, only the dialogues between characters” (Ioana). Lora watched some webisodes of Cougar Town but didn’t find them funny. Aurélie has followed the Twitter of Sookie Stackouse (True Blood) and Guilleaume D. sometimes consumes humoristic content on 9gag, but irregularly. “It’s not my thing” (Aurélie). The participants are even more critical of movies, especially the sequels of Sex and the City.That does not mean the respondents always reject transmedia components. First, they enjoy elements that are not supposed to belong to the world. These may be fan productions or contents they personally inject into the universe. Several have done research on the story’s topic: Alizée investigated mental disorders to understand United States of Tara; Guilleaume G. wandered around on Google Earth to explore Albuquerque (Breaking Bad); for Guilleaume D., Hugh Laurie’s music album is part of the character of Gregory House; Julie adores Peter Pan and, for her, Once Upon A Time, Finding Neverland, and Hook are part of the same universe. Four people particularly enjoy when the fictional characters’ couples are duplicated by real relationships between actors (which may explain all the excitement surrounding Kit Harrington and Rose Leslie’s real-life love story, paralleling their characters’ romance on GOT). If there is a transmedia production, it seems that there is also a kind of “transmedia reception,” as viewers connect heteroclite elements to build a coherent world of their own. Some respondents even develop a creative link to the world: writing fan-fiction, poetry, or building scale models (but that is not this paper’s topic, see Sepulchre “Les Constellations Narratives”, “Editorial”).A second element they appreciate is the GOT TV series. Approximately half of the respondents cite GoT (29/52). They are not fundamentally different from the other viewers except that more of them have fan practices (9 vs. 1), and a few more develop transmedia consumption (76% against 61%). To the very extent that there is consensus over the poor quality of the novels (in general), A Song of Ice and Fire seems to have seduced every respondent. Loic usually hates reading; his relatives have pointed out to him that he has read more with GoT than in his entire lifetime. Marie D. finds the novels so good that she stopped watching the TV series. Marine insists she generally reads fan-fiction because she hates the novelisations, but the GoT books are the only good ones. The novels apparently allow a deeper immersion into the world and that is the manifest benefit of consuming them. Guilleaume G. appreciates the more detailed descriptions. Céline, Florentin, Ioana, and Marine like to access the characters’ thoughts. Julie thinks she feels the emotions more deeply when she reads. Sometimes, the novels can change their opinions on a character. Emilie finds Sansa despicable in the TV series, but the books led her to understand her sensibility.Videogames & TransmediaThe vast majority of transmedia support from the GoT universe primarily targets “world lovers,” that is, users involved in media uses because they love the fantasy of the universe. However, only video games allow a personalized incarnation as a hero over a long term of time, and thus a customized active appropriation. This is in fact undoubtedly why the GoT universe’s transmedia galaxy has also been deployed in video games. GOT Ascent is a strategy game edited by Disruptor Beam, an American company specialising in TV games. Released in February 2013, the franchise attracted up to 9,000,000 players in 2014, but only 295,107 monthly active users. This significant difference between the accumulated number of players and those actually active (around 3 %) may well testify that those investing in this game are probably not a community of gamers.Combining role playing and strategy game, GoT Ascent is designed in a logic that deeply integrates the elements, not only from the TV series, but also from books and other transmedia extensions. In GoT Ascent, gamers play a small house affiliated to one of the main clans of Westeros. During the immersive game experience, the player participates in all the GoT stories from an insider’s point of view. The game follows the various GoT books, resulting in an extension whenever a new volume is published. The player interacts with others by PVE (Player versus Environment) or PVP (Player versus Player) alliances with a common chat and the possibility of sending goods to other members. With a fair general score (4,1 on 10), the game is evaluated weakly by the players (JeuxOnLine). Hence a large majority of them are probably not looking for that kind of experience.If we focus on the top players in GoT Ascent, likely representing those most invested, it is interesting to examine the names they choose. Indeed, that choice often reveals the player’s intention, either to refer to a gamer logic or the universe of GoT. During our research, we clearly distinguished two types of names, self-referential ones or those referring to the player’s general pseudonym. In concrete terms, the name is a declination of a pseudonym of more general avatars, or else refers to other video game worlds than GoT. In GoT Ascent, the second category of names, those very clearly anchored in the world of Martin, are clearly dominant.Is it possible to correlate the name chosen and the type of player? Can we affirm that people who choose a name not related to the GoT universe are players and that the others are GoT fans? Probably not obviously, but the consistency of a character’s name with the universe is, in the GoT case, very important for an immersive experience. The books’ author has carefully crafted his surnames and, in the game, assuming a name is therefore very clearly a symbolically important act in the desire to roleplay in that universe. Choosing one that is totally out of sync with the game world clearly means you are not there to immerse yourself in the spirit of GoT, but to play. In short, the first category is representative of the gamers, but the players are not restricted to those naming their avatar out of the world’s spirit.This intuition is confirmed by a review of the names related to the rank of the players. When we studied high-level players, we realized that most of them use humorous names, which are totally out of the mood of the GoT universe. Thus, in 2013, the first ranked player in terms of power was called Flatulence, a French term that is part of a humorous semantics. Yet this type of denomination is not limited to the first of the list. Out the top ten players, only two used plausible GoT names. However, as soon as one leaves the game’s elite’s sphere, the plausible names are quickly in the majority. There is a sharp opposition between the vast majority of players, who obviously try to match the world, and pure gamers.We found the same logic for the names of the Alliances, the virtual communities of players varying from a few to hundreds. Three Alliances have achieved the #1 rank in the game in the game’s first two years: Hear Me Roar (February 2013), Fire and Blood (January 2014), and Kong's Landing (September 2014). Two of those Alliances are of a more humoristic bent. However, an investigation into the 400 alliances demonstrates that fewer than 5 % have a clear humoristic signification. We might estimate that in GoT Ascent the large majority of players increase their immersive experience by choosing a GoT role play related Alliance name. We can conclude that they are mainly GoT fans playing the game, and that they seek to lend the world coherence. The high-level players are an exception. Inside GOT Ascent, the dominant culture remains connected to the GoT world.ConclusionA transmedia story is defined by its networked configuration, “worldmaking,” and users’ involvement. The GoT constellation is clearly a weak ensemble (Sepulchre, 2012). However, it has indeed developed on several platforms. Furthermore, the relationship between the novels and the TV series is quite unprecedented. Indeed, both elements are considered as qualitative, and the TV series has become the main entry for many fans. Thus, both of them acquire an equal authority.The GoT transmedia storyworld also unfolds a fictional world and depends on users’ activities, but in a peculiar way. If the viewers and gamers are analysed from fan or game studies perspectives, they appear to be weak users. Indeed, they do not seek new components; they are mainly readers and do not enjoy the transmedia experience; the players are not regular ones; and they are much less creative and humorous than high-level gamers.These weak practices have, however, one function: to prolong the pleasure of the fictional world, which is the third characteristic of transmedia. The players experiment with GoT Ascent by incarnating characters inserted into Alliances whose names may exist in the original world. This appears to be a clear attempt to become immersed in the universe. The ordinary viewers appreciate the deeper experience the novels allow. When they feed the world with unexpected elements, it is also to improve the world.Thus, transmedia appropriation by users is a reality, motivated by a taste for the universe, even if it is a weak consumption in comparison with the demanding, creative, and sometimes iconoclastic practices gamers and fans usually develop. It is obvious, in both fields, that they are new TV series fans (they quote mainly recent shows) and beginners in the world of games. For a significant part of them, GoT was probably their first time developing transmedia practices.However, GoT Ascent is not well evaluated by gamers and many of them do not repeat the experience (as the monthly number of gamers shows). Likewise, the ordinary viewers neglect the official transmedia components as too marketing oriented. The GoT novels are the exception proving the rule. They demonstrate that users are quite selective: they are not satisfied with weak elements. The question that this paper cannot answer is: was GoT a first experience? Will they persevere in the future? Yet, in this preliminary research, we have seen that studying ordinary users’ weak involvement (series viewers or gamers) is an interesting path in elaborating a theory of transmedia user’s activities, which takes the public’s diversity into account.ReferencesBerry, Vincent. L’Expérience Virtuelle: Jouer, Vivre, Apprendre Dans un Jeu Video. Rennes: UP Rennes, 2012.Boellstorff, Tom. “A Typology of Ethnographic Scales for Virtual Worlds.” Online Worlds: Convergence of the Real and the Virtual. Ed. William Sim Bainbridge. London: Springer, 2009.Bourdaa, Mélanie. “Taking a Break from All Your Worries: Battlestar Galactica et Les Nouvelles Pratiques Télévisuelles des Fans.” Questions de Communication 22 (2012) 2014. <http://journals.openedition.org/questionsdecommunication/6917>.Chen, Mark. Leet Noobs: The Life and Death of An Expert Player Group in World of Warcraft. New York: Peter Lang, 2012.Collective. Le Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États: Les Cahiers de Veille de la Fondation Télécom. Paris: Fondation Télécom, 2012. 29 Dec. 2017 <https://www.fondation-mines-telecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2012-cahier-veille-transmedia.pdf\>.Davis, C.H. “Audience Value and Transmedia Products.” Media Innovations. Eds. T. Storsul and A. Krumsvik. Gothenburg: Nordicom, 2013. 179-190.Gambarato, Renira. “How to Analyze Transmedia Narratives?” Conference New Media: Changing Media Landscapes. Saint Petersburg, 2012. 2017 <http://prezi.com/fovz0jrlfsn0/how-to-analyze-transmedia-narratives>.Gambarato, Renira. “Transmedia Storytelling.” Serious Science, 2016. 2017 <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thZnd_K8Vfs>.Jenkins, Henry. Convergence Culture. Where Old and New Media Collide. Updated ed. New York: New York UP, 2006.JeuxOnLine. “Game of Thrones Ascent.” 2013. <http://www.jeuxonline.info/jeu/Game_of_Thrones_Ascent>.Peyron, David. Culture Geek. Limoges: FYP Editions, 2013.Philipps, Andrea. A Creator’s Guide to Transmedia Storytelling: How to Captivate and Engage Audiences across Multiple Platforms. New York: McGraw-Hill Education, 2012.Saint-Gelais, Richard. Fictions Transfuges. La Transfictionnalité et Ses Enjeux. Paris: Seuil, 2011.Sepulchre, S. Le Transmédia Dans Tous Ses États: Les Cahiers de Veille de la Fondation Télécom. Paris: Fondation Télécom, 2012. 29 Dec. 2017 <https://www.fondation-mines-telecom.org/wp-content/uploads/2016/01/2012-cahier-veille-transmedia.pdf>.———. “La Constellation Transmédiatique de Breaking Bad: Analyse de la Complémentarité Trouvée entre la Télévision et Internet.” ESSACHESS-Journal for Communication 4.1 (2011). 29 Dec. 2017 <http://www.essachess.com/index.php/jcs/article/view/111>. ———. “Les Constellations Narratives: Que Font les Téléspectateurs des Adaptations Multimédiatiques des Séries Télévisées?” TV/Series 3 (2013). 29 Dec. 2017 <http://journals.openedition.org/tvseries/729>. ———. “Editorial.” Inter Pares: Revue Électronique de Jeunes Chercheurs en Sciences Humains et Sociales 6 (2016). 29 Dec. 2017 <https://epic.univ-lyon2.fr/medias/fichier/inter-pares-6-maquette-v8web_1510576660265-pdf>.Servais, Olivier. “Funerals in the “World of Warcraft”: Religion, Polemic, and Styles of Play in a Videogame Universe.” Social Compass 62.3 (2015): 362-378.Stein, Louisa Ellen, and Kristina Busse. Sherlock and Transmedia Fandom: Essays on the BBC series. Jefferson: McFarland, 2014.

The purpose of this paper is to study the adaptation process of the TV-show Game of Thrones. This paper focuses mainly on how David Benioff and D.B. Weiss and HBO adapted the TV-show from George R.R. Martins book series A Song of Ice and Fire and what, in the adaptation and in the reception of the TV-show, made it such a global cultural phenomenon. The analysis has been done by analysing interviews and studying behind-the-scenes material that has been available through articles and bonus material provided by the web and on the DVD and Blu-Ray features of the show. Mary H. Snyders Analyzing Literature-to-Film Adaptations provides a ground tool of analysing adaptations where particularly her “A Marriage of Media” theory has significantly helped the study. The paper analyses fantasy as a genre, the book series that the TV-show is based on, and the adaptation process itself and the different components that make up for the TV-show called Game of Thrones. After the adaptation analysis there is a study on how the internet has helped distributing both the show’s popularity and the show itself through the use of illegal downloading. The result is that the adaption is a successful “Marriage between media”, to use Snyders words, where the internet can be seen as product of that metaphorical marriage. The confidence and trust that both the author of the books and the show runners of the TV-series has placed in each other is the binding fundament that made the adaption as successful as it is. HBO as a cable network company also play a significant part where the financial support to the show’s production and the non-existent censorship regarding the adult content otherwise wouldn’t have been provided for, had the show been produced and/or aired by any other network company for example. The previous successes of other fantasy adaptations such as The Lord of the Rings and the Harry Potter-series could also be seen as necessary initiators regarding the industry’s newfound openness towards large scale fantasy projects.