ESSENTIAL INDUSTRY AND AWARD NEWS  MAY 15, 2019 The Other Game of Thrones Maestermind You may not know Bryan Cogman by name—but if you obsess over Game of Thrones, you certainly know his work. Cogman came aboard the show when production began, working first as assistant to show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Then he steadily rose through its ranks, eventually getting a co-executive producer title and writing a total of 11 episodes—more than anyone other than Benioff and Weiss, including A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin. As Joanna Robinsonwrites, the show’s cast and crew see Cogman as an essential ingredient to their success: “[Sophie] Turner,who began playing Sansa Stark when she was 13, says Cogman is the backbone of Game of Thrones. [Nikolaj] Coster-Waldau, who played Jaime Lannister, refers to him as the ‘walking encyclopedia.’ But George R.R. Martin . . . leans on his own Westerosi mythology to pay the highest compliment: ‘Dave and Dan—even though there were two of them, there really needed to be three. Bryan was the third head of the dragon.’” Here, Cogman opens up about his decade of Thrones—and moving from HBO to Amazon, where he just might be the guy who creates the world’s next obsession-worthy series. Elsewhere in HWD, Joe Pompeo surveys a particularly chaotic year at the TV upfronts; Sonia Saraiya profiles Netflix guru Brené Brown; contributor Donald Liebenson remembers the late, great Tim Conway; and Yohana Desta makes a case for why you really should care about Troy, the Brad Pitt sword-and-sandal epic that came out 15 years ago this week. Life After Thrones Handpicked by George R.R. Martin to pitch a Game of Thronesprequel to HBO, Bryan Cogman is instead now working for Amazon—where he can cast a very large shadow of his own on this post-Thrones universe. READ MORE » Will the Revolution Be Televised? Fox is shrunk, Time Warner is gone, CBS teeters on the brink, and the streamers say “linear TV” is history. The future is finally arriving for TV—but no one yet knows exactly what it means. READ MORE » What Can Brown Do for You? Best-selling author Brené Brown recently launched a Netflix special. How did an introverted shame researcher become an on-camera dynamo? READ MORE » First-Class Second Banana Beloved actor Tim Conway, who died Tuesday at the age of 85, had a knack for physical comedy—and getting his co-stars to crack up on the air. READ MORE » Trojan Man On Troy’s 15th anniversary, director Wolfgang Petersen explains his shocking first meeting with Brad Pitt, the movie’s Game of Thrones connection, and its fascinating link to Christopher Nolan. READ MORE »