FINALLY!



http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/08/arts/television/hbo-eyeing-a-deadwood-return-and-game-of-thrones-extension.html

HBO Eyeing a ‘Deadwood’ Return and ‘Game of Thrones’ Extension
By JEREMY EGNER
JAN. 8, 2016

HBO is looking to bring back a gone-but-not-forgotten fan favorite and extend its current top series further than even the show’s creators originally hoped.

Michael Lombardo, HBO’s president of programming, said on Thursday at the Television Critics Association winter press tour that he had approved a movie follow-up to “Deadwood,” David Milch’s poetically grimy western that ran for three seasons before ending rather suddenly in 2006. Mr. Milch will reportedly begin work on a script for the movie, which will run on HBO, when he finishes work on his current project.

“David has our commitment that we are going to do it,” Mr. Lombardo told TV Line, who first reported the movie plan. “He pitched what he thought generally the storyline would be — and knowing David, that could change. But it’s going to happen.”

Rumblings of a return to “Deadwood” have arisen periodically since the show’s end, but they gained steam in August when Garret Dillahunt, an actor on the series, tweeted that he was “hearing credible rumors about a #Deadwood movie.” One challenge would be to align schedules for “Deadwood” stars like Ian McShane, Timothy Olyphant, Anna Gunn and Kim Dickens, who have remained busy since the show ended.

“I’m going to leave that in David’s hands,” Mr. Lombardo said. “He’s confident he will be able to” make the scheduling work.

Mr. Lombardo also told reporters that HBO was close to a finalizing a two-season extension for “Game of Thrones.” The deal would add a seventh and eighth seasons to the epic fantasy series, which returns for Season 6 on April 24.

Three more seasons would take “Game of Thrones” into at least 2018, though cable dramas, like “Mad Men” on AMC and HBO’s own “The Sopranos,” have been known to split up final seasons.

That said, Mr. Lombardo did not say whether Season 8 would be the last one, and he’s been open about his desire to keep “Game of Thrones,” the most popular show in the cable channel’s history, going for as long as possible. (He’s previously said he’d like it to go 10 seasons.) He first mentioned the likelihood of an eight-season run last summer, though Dan Weiss and David Benioff, the creators, previously said the show would go for seven seasons.

Starting with the new season in April, “Game of Thrones” will progress largely without the blueprint of the George R. R. Martin novels that inspired it — the show’s narrative has surpassed that of Mr. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. Any hopes that the parallel strands of the “Thrones” saga would be at least somewhat contemporaneous were dashed last week, when Mr. Martin announced that he had missed his deadline to finish “The Winds of Winter,” the long-awaited next installment, which means it will not be released before the new season of “Game of Thrones.”

“I can’t tell you when it will be done, or when it will be published,” he wrote in a blog post, adding, “I am not going to set another deadline for myself to trip over. The deadlines just stress me out.”