Game Of Thrones season 6: The books and show will now be two different versions, reveal showrunners

By now, fans of the Game Of Thrones TV series and books are well aware that the upcoming season 6 of the show has outpaced author George RR Martin's novels, and according to the showrunners, that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

"At a certain point, we realized we were going to outpace the books and we kind of chose to see it as a great thing on both sides — there's this amazing world George has created and now there are two different versions, and there's no reason we can see why you can't be thrilled and surprised and dismayed by both of these different versions of this world," the Thrones showrunner Dan Weiss told Entertainment Weekly.

In January, Martin announced that his next book in the saga, The Winds Of Winter, wasn't going to be ready by the time Thrones returns on 24 April. This actually gave the popular HBO drama some freedom to forge its own path free of any particular expectations.

Of course, the makers are not going to go all out in terms of spoiling the new books for readers. Showrunner David Benioff revealed that "people are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show."

"People are talking about whether the books are going to be spoiled — and it's really not true," Benioff told EW. "So much of what we're doing diverges from the books at this point. And while there are certain key elements that will be the same, we're not going to talk so much about that — and I don't think George is either. People are going to be very surprised when they read the books after the show. They're quite divergent in so many respects for the remainder of the show."