The 9th episode of Game of Thrones season 6, Battle of the Bastards promises to be the biggest one till date and the fans are already excited to see what happens in the big battle in the North between Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton. Game of Thrones is known for it’s battle sequences and the Battle of the Bastards is going to dwarf all the other battle scenes that we have watched in the show. To make things more exciting, the episode has been directed by Miguel Sapochnik, who directed the Hardhome episode in season 5 and everyone knows how amazing the episode was. EW has now shared the numbers involved in shooting the battle scene and they are massive!
The battle took 25 days to shoot and that itself shows how enormous it is going to be. The scene also required over 600 crew members, which includes the cameramen, costume department etc, and 500 extras were hired to be a part of the Jon Snow and Ramsay Bolton’s army. Later visual effects were used to expand the numbers into thousands. There were also 4 camera crews, 25 stuntmen and women and 70 horses!
These numbers are really high and let’s not forget that every episode in Game of Thrones season took more than $10 million to shoot and Battle of the Bastards was the costliest episode in the season. We don’t have the exact numbers but considering the amount of resources that were required to shoot the battle, we feel that the cost for making the episode might be more than $15 million. If the numbers don’t sound convincing, let the director of the episode, Miguel Sapochnik tell you about the episode.
“David and Dan wanted to do a thing of spectacle, a strategic pitchfield battle they hadn’t had the resources to do back in season one or two. I was particularly interested in depicting both the horror of war and the roll of luck in battle.”
Battle of the Bastards airs this Sunday at 9 PM on HBO.