Game Of Thrones' Battle of Winterfell: all we know about the longest battle scene ever filmed
It's the moment Game of Thrones fans have been waiting for since the very first episode: the final, bloody confrontation between the show's heroes and the army of demonic White Walkers led by the Night King.
The battle scene dominates an episode of the forthcoming eighth – and final – series of the HBO fantasy saga. Behind the scenes, the cast were fighting their own battle against exhaustion. According to showrunner David Benioff, crew members were left looking like "Nosferatu" after weeks working to a gruelling schedule they called "The Long Night".
"Nothing can prepare you for how physically draining it is," said Maisie Williams, who plays Arya Stark, while on set last year. "It’s night after night, and again and again, and it just doesn’t stop. You can’t get sick, and you have to look out for yourself because there’s so much to do that nobody else can do." Speaking to Entertainment Weekly (EW), she continued: "There are moments you’re just broken as a human and just want to cry.”
One leading actress reportedly fainted while filming the episode, while a crew member had to be hospitalised after an asthma attack while filming a smoky indoor scene.
Directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who won an Emmy for his season six episode Battle of the Bastards, this episode took 11 weeks of exhausting overnight shoots in freezing conditions. For inspiration Sapochnik looked to the Helm's Deep sequence in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers – a continuous battle sequence that ran to around 40 minutes in the film – but the Battle of Winterfell is even longer and more ambitious, according to the show's producers.
“What we have asked the production team and crew to do this year truly has never been done in television or in a movie,” co-executive producer Bryan Cogman told EW. “This final face-off between the Army of the Dead and the army of the living is completely unprecedented and relentless and a mixture of genres even within the battle."
The length of the shoot was partly due to Sapochnik's insistence on filming continuous sequences, rather than a series of short takes, to create a believable "flow" throughout the battle. “When you have rapid cutting you can tell it was all assembled in post-production,” Benioff said. “That’s not the show’s style and it’s not Miguel’s style.”
The battle will bring the show's main stars together – including several who have not shared the screen since the very first episode. As well as Williams, it will feature Emilia Clarke (who plays Daenerys Targaryen), Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Peter Dinkalge (Tyrion Lannister), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark), Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) and Iain Glen (Ser Jorah Mormont).
According to Turner, the full episode is understood to run for 90 minutes – though the cast weren't told exactly how long it would be. Glen, who has been a regular cast member since the first series, called it “the most unpleasant experience I’ve had on Thrones", adding that it left him "really miserable".
"You get to sleep at seven in the morning and when you wake in the midday you’re still so spent you can’t really do anything, and then you’re back," Glen told EW. "You have no life outside it. You have an absolute f---ked bunch of actors... on screen it bleeds through to the reality of the Thrones world.”
Glen wasn't the only cast member who found the line between real life and the drama beginning to blur. Anderson said he got "genuinely lost" in the vast Winterfell set used for part of the battle sequence, built in the Paint Hall of Belfast's Titanic Studios, where the doomed ship was constructed. "You can walk into rooms and cross into tunnels and find yourself in another part of the castle. It’s really immersive," Anderson said. "There were a few moments where I forgot it wasn’t real, which is bizarre.”
Season 8 is the most expensive series of the show so far, despite only running to six episodes. Though the Battle of Winterfell may prove to be its highlight, it won't be the show's finale: the final episode will be directed by Benioff and co-showrunner DB Weiss. As the show has departed from its source in George RR Martin's novels, fans have no idea what to expect – though a teaser for the final season, Crypts Of Winterfell, suggests Jon Snow may emerge triumphant.
