When it came time to adapt George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books for HBO, its creators titled it Game of Thrones—hewing very closely to A Game of Thrones, Martin’s first novel in the series. House of the Dragon, adapted from Martin’s history tome Fire & Blood, instantly signaled the show’s focus on House Targaryen. But when it came to adapting the Tales of Dunk and Egg novellas, you might have thought that title would work just fine for television.
The man at the top, however, had a request for showrunner Ira Parker: please change it.
“Early on, George was like, ‘Just don’t call it Dunk & Egg—it sounds like Laverne & Shirley. It sounds like a sitcom,’” Parker recalled to Variety.
Coming up with a different name would be “absolutely fine,” Parker assured the author. But then, “When we were putting the final touches in the post-production process, I did sort of waver a little bit. I said, ‘Everyone’s just gonna call it Dunk & Egg, so why don’t we call it that?’”
At that moment, Parker said, his assistant stepped in as the voice of reason. “Then I was talked down by my assistant that it wasn’t a wise idea. And I agree. It’s nice to see a show called A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, and come there to find out that it is just a little lighter and has some fun, rather than setting people up with Dunk & Egg and you sort of know what you’re gonna get.”
Parker also talked to Variety about the tongue-in-cheek acknowledgment of Egg’s Westeros truth bomb—that there are, in fact, nine kingdoms rather than seven—with on-screen titles (presumably temporarily) changing the name of the show in the season finale’s final moments.
“That’s maybe me getting a little too jokey,” Parker said. “People may hate it or crucify me for that, but there’s a bit of a lighter touch to these shows … I like it. Enough of the wonderful creatives that I worked with liked it, too. It came from an honest place. It’s all true. It’s nine kingdoms at that point. We want to make Westeros a fun place to hang out, even when terrible, terrible things are happening and everyone’s sad, just like real life … even in a bad spot, Dunk and Egg are still Dunk and Egg again.”
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