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Kingdom Creator Gushes About His Love for Game of Thrones to Series Showrunners
posted on by Kim Morrissy
Kingdom creator Yasuhisa Hara attended a roundtable discussion with HBO television show Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss on August 15. There, Hara revealed that he has been following Game of Thrones avidly since its fourth season, and that he personally insisted that the evil prince character of Sei Kyou draw inspiration from Game of Thrones' Joffrey for Kingdom's live-action film adaptation.
"The villain Sei Kyou holds the key in the Kingdom film," Hara said. "It's easy to create a flimsy villain, but it's very difficult to create a loathsome yet charismatic villain. I think that Joffrey from Game of Thrones is the best villain. Sei Kyou in the Kingdom manga is lacking as a villain in parts because of my inexperience as a creator at that time. When we were making the film, the first thing I did was tell everyone, 'Look at Joffrey.'"
Benioff and Weiss also shared their appreciation for Kingdom. They praised the visuals in its trailer, remarking that even without English subtitles, the story is conveyed extremely well. They also praised the rich attention to detail and the expressiveness of all the characters, including the minor ones.
Finally, the showrunners commented on how Japanese and English productions have been influencing each other. Benioff said, "When we were filming Game of Thrones, we took visual inspiration from Akira Kurosawa's Ran. Kurosawa himself took inspiration from Shakespeare, so I can really feel how all these works have been influencing each other across national borders."
The live-action film adaptation of Hara's historical manga Kingdom opened in Japan on April 19 and sold 506,861 tickets to earn 690,219,500 yen (about US$6.17 million) in its first three days. Funimation screened the film in the United States and Canada on August 16.
George R. R. Martin's fantasy book series A Song of Ice and Fire inspired the popular television adaptation Game of Thrones, which premiered in April 2011. The eighth and final season concluded in May this year.
Source: Comic Natalie
