The writing of author George R.R. Martin spawned one of the most popular fantasy TV shows ever with HBO's Game of Thrones, but Martin didn't love every scene in the show.

　　Martin told Entertainment Weekly that his least favorite scene in the show's eight-season run came at the very start. In Season 1, Game of Thrones was working on a modest budget (for the scale of the production) of around $6 million USD per episode. Due to this, and presumably other factors, the scene were King Robert goes hunting was scaled back beyond Martin's liking.

　　"Where we really fell down in terms of budget was my least favorite scene in the entire show, in all eight seasons: King Robert goes hunting," Martin said. "Four guys walking on foot through the woods carrying spears and Robert is giving Renly s**t. In the books, Robert goes off hunting, we get word he was gored by a boar, and they bring him back and he dies. So I never did [a hunting scene]. But I knew what a royal hunting party was like. There would have been a hundred guys. There would have been pavilions. There would have been huntsmen. There would have been dogs. There would have been horns blowing--that's how a king goes hunting!"

　　In the show, King Robert is shown hunting with only three others, and the sequence has minimal props. However, Martin acknowledged that, because Game of Thrones was an unproven project during Season 1, "we couldn't afford horses or dogs or pavilions."

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　　You can rewatch the scene below.

　　Game of Thrones director Alan Taylor previously reflected on the relatively low budget of Game of Thrones Season 1. In particular, he said the scene where Ned Stark has his head chopped off didn't have nearly enough extras in the background.

　　"It's funny seeing how small and rinky dink the scene is because Game of Thrones has gone on to become very well-funded by HBO," he told Vanity Fair. "But at this stage in season one, no one had seen the show yet, we didn't know if it had an audience yet and we didn't have a dime."

　　Game of Thrones wrapped up its eighth and final season in 2019. A spin-off prequel is in the works, and Martin is also working on the next instalment in his book series.