George R.R. Martin Admits Unfinished ‘The Winds of Winter’ Is the ‘Curse of My Life’
"There’s no doubt" the long awaited "A Song of Ice and Fire" novel "is 13 years late," the author laments The post George R.R. Martin Admits Unfinished ‘The Winds of Winter’ Is the ‘Curse of My Life’ appeared first on TheWrap.
George R.R. Martin is exhausted by the constant check-ins on the progress of his long forthcoming “A Song of Fire and Ice” novel “The Winds of Winter.”
While talking to Time in a recent interview, Martin was asked about comments made a week ago where the author posed with the real-life direwolves that made a comeback thanks to developments in biotech. Online jabs like “We got real dire wolves before ‘Winds of Winter'” left him frustrated.
“That’s the curse of my life,” Martin said. “There’s no doubt ‘Winds of Winter’ is 13 years late. I’m still working on it. I have periods where I make progress and then other things divert my attention and suddenly I have a deadline for one of the HBO shows, I have something else to do.”
One of those things is helping the development of the HBO “Game of Thrones” prequel “House of the Dragon.” Shortly after the conclusion of Season 2, Martin took to his blog to air out some complaints he had with the series – mainly changes to pivotal moments he worries will snowball, like cutting a character in the infamous Blood and Cheese scene from the second season.
“As I saw it, the ‘Sophie’s Choice’ aspect was the strongest part of the sequence, the darkest, the most visceral,” Martin wrote . “I hated to lose that. And judging from the comments online, most of the fans seemed to agree.”
The author added that he protested with showrunner Ryan Condal about the changes, but eventually relented.
“When Ryan Condal first told me what he meant to do, ages ago (back in 2022, might be) I argued against it, for all these reasons,” he said. “I did not argue long, or with much heat, however. The change weakened the sequence, I felt, but only a bit. And Ryan had what seemed to be practical reasons for it; they did not want to deal with casting another child, especially a two-year old toddler. Kids that young will inevitably slow down production, and there would be budget implications. Budget was already an issue on ‘House of the Dragon,’ it made sense to save money wherever we could. Moreover, Ryan assured me that we were not losing Prince Maelor, simply postponing him. Queen Helaena could still give birth to him in Season 3, presumably after getting with child late in Season 2. That made sense to me, so I withdrew my objections and acquiesced to the change.”
Condal recently broke his silence on being called out by the author of the story he’s tasked with adapting. He assured Entertainment Weekly that none of the changes – including cutting Maelor – is done lightly.
“There’s nothing we do on the show without talking it through and thinking about it very deeply for usually many months, if not years. I will just say that the creative decisions that we make in the show all flow through me, every single one of them, and this is the show that I want to make and believe, as a fan of ‘Fire & Blood’ and a deep reader of this material, it is the adaptation that we should be making to not only serve ‘Fire & Blood,’ but also a massive television audience.”
The third season of HBO’s “House of the Dragon” began production last month and is expected to release in 2026. Martin’s “A Dance with Dragons” – book five in “A Song of Fire and Ice” – released on July 12, 2011. Still no word on a release date for “Winds of Winter.”
The post George R.R. Martin Admits Unfinished ‘The Winds of Winter’ Is the ‘Curse of My Life’ appeared first on TheWrap.
