'Game of Thrones' Delivers Epic Ratings For HBO

By Michael Lopez

Between The Lord of the Rings, The Hobbit, and now the new show Game of Thrones, it’s clear that medieval fantasy themes can have a major impact in Hollywood. Just two days after its premiere on HBO, Thrones got the green light for season number two.

And it’s not hard to see why; the book series it was based on has legions of fans, the show's a social media smash, and HBO's ratings have been through the roof!

Over 4.2 million cable subscribers watched Game of Thrones’ epic debut. That is actually a very impressive number for HBO, especially when you consider that Treme, the network’s other big premiere of the week, attracted only 605,000 viewers.

When speaking about the show’s success, HBO co-president Richard Plepler said,

“[Game of Thrones] is a quintessential HBO show — it has a passionate connection with a big part of our audience. True Blood‘s numbers were nowhere near that [the first season]. It’s a strong show for us. The Twitter action this morning is tremendous. This is only going to build.”

The social media response for the series has been extremely positive and looking at the history of the project, it’s easy to see why. Game of Thrones already had millions of fanboys hooked into its barbaric sword-wielding characters long before the first TV episodes were ever shot.

Back in 1996, fantasy author George R. R. Martin (who Time magazine recently added to their Top 100 list) published the first of seven books based in Thrones’ mythical Westeros universe. Titled A Song of Ice and Fire, the saga now includes four published works, a role-playing game, and a PC title due later this year.

Each epic novel stretches roughly 700 pages and includes intricate point-of-view chapters dedicated to characters like Daenerys Targaryen (played by Emily Clarke), Lord Ned Stark (Sean Bean), and “little” Tyrion Lannister (Peter Dinklage) -all of whom appear in the series. Plus, there are plenty of fire breathing dragons, brooding giants, and humanoid “others” mixed in to the massive plot.

So far, the HBO show hasn’t delved too deep into the otherworldly creatures, but you can bet it will be coming. In the first two episodes, audiences have already been introduced to the ultra-smart direwolves and witnessed some pretty serious beatdown battles. Plus, Thrones has gained quite a bit of attention for its erotic content, broadcasting intense sex scenes that have set the web world on fire!

With eight new episodes to go, it’s clear there will plenty of more action headed to the land of Westeros this year. HBO execs have revealed that they hope to cover one Ice and Fire book per season, which means viewers could be hooked on Game Of Thrones for many moons to come.

Are you a fan of HBO’s Game of Thrones? Sound off in the comments or @MTV3.

Tags A Song of Ice and Fire, Books, Fantasy, Game of Thrones, George R. R. Martin, HBO, Hot Stuff, Television