George R.R. Martin is always committed to make his shows as epic as possible, and that not only applies to his writing. The Game of Thrones creator went above and beyond as producer of AMC's Dark Winds by lending the team his own train for the season 3 finale.
"I'd heard that we might be shooting the finale on the train, and I said, 'Oh my god, that would be incredible',” executive producer and director Chris Eyre told TV Insider in a recent interview. "Then it dawned on me, I've been on that train because, lo and behold, it's a train that George R. R. Martin, our producing partner, owns here in Santa Fe."
In the dramatic final episode of the season sees Lieutenant Joe Leaphorn (played by Zahn McClarnon) cornering a murderer on a train, pushing passengers aside during the chase and finally confronting him on an open flatbed. Eyre now revealed that the train scene was included into the finale only when Martin gave his permission to use his own train.
"How many people can say, 'Hey, I have a friend who owns a train and a rail line'? And so, there were conversations with George about [whether] we could shoot the train for the finale. So they wrote a script with the train, and I was over the moon," he recalled, adding: "It's one of those things that you hope to do as a filmmaker is do a train sequence and have that kind of landscape. It has all sorts of broad strokes towards the Western, which I love."
George R. R. Martin made a surprise cameo in the season 3 premiere of the show alongside fellow executive producer and Hollywood icon Robert Redford, so it's clear the author is very committed to make this show as epic as possible. He even makes an apparent dig at his long-delayed new novel, The Winds of Winter.
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