Season 3
The fantasy TV series Game of Thrones was renewed for a third season by the U.S. cable channel HBO on April 10, 2012, nine days after the second season's premiere. Like the other seasons, the third season will consist of ten episodes. It will be based roughly on the first half of A Storm of Swords, the third of the A Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R. R. Martin, of which the series is an adaptation. Production began in July 2012, and the season will premiere on March 31, 2013.
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 (including all airings), HBO announced the show's renewal for a third season. Prior to that announcement, there had been rumors and reports that showrunnersDavid 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. The ten episodes of the third season are to be longer than the previous season's, about 56 or 57 minutes as opposed to about 52.
Writing
The third season will be based on the first half of the novel A Storm of Swords. Benioff had previously said that A Storm of Swords would need to be adapted in two seasons on account of its length. Benioff and Weiss also noted that they thought of Game of Thrones as an adaptation of the novel series as a whole, rather than of individual books, which gave them the liberty to move scenes back and forth across books according to the requirements of the screen adaptation. According to Benioff, the third season will contain a particularly memorable scene from A Storm of Swords, the prospect of filming which was part of their motivation to adapt the novels for television in the first place.