Much of what John Jurgensen reports here with regard to George R. R. Martin and the first Game of Thrones television show had been known/established, but it’s still sort of wild how it played out:
Mr. Martin, whose fantasy books established a mythology on par with J.R.R. Tolkien’s, is reasserting control of his material in the TV realm. Though he had a close hand in the formative seasons of “Game of Thrones,” people involved in the show said he grew frustrated by a lack of involvement in its final stretch. That’s when the plot of HBO’s eight-season adaptation passed the events published in his books, and headed toward a 2019 finale that left many viewers feeling as burned as Daenerys Targaryen’s victims in King’s Landing. “I had no contribution to the later seasons except, you know, inventing the world, the story and all the characters,” Mr. Martin said. “I believe I have more influence now than I did on the original show.”
And:
Mr. Martin had backed “Game of Thrones” producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss in their vision for a TV adaptation. The author participated in casting choices, advised on plot arcs and wrote a handful of episodes. But his input decreased as the show’s writers went beyond the material in his books, and the author focused on the sixth (and overdue) installment in his novel series, “The Winds of Winter.”
And:
The search for a “Game of Thrones” spinoff started in 2016 after the sixth season, when Messrs. Benioff and Weiss decided to close out the series, citing their plan to end it before the show passed its prime. HBO urged the showrunners to keep the blockbuster series rolling, but eventually agreed to finish with eight seasons. Mr. Martin, too, had fought the producers’ decision. “I was saying it needs to be 10 seasons at least and maybe 12, 13. I lost that one,” he said.
This seems like one of those things that is easy to say with hindsight, but many people really were saying it at the time as well. The reality, which quickly became apparent on-screen, was that Benioff and Weiss were trying to wrap up far too many wide-ranging storylines in too short of a time. The last couple seasons of episodes were overstuffed even when many of them were well over the typical hour in length.
It was like trying to land a plane with far too much fuel. They needed to fly around for a while and let it burn off. Instead, they attempted to land and it blew up.
I mean, to be clear, the episodes aren’t awful — certainly they look great as the production value remained top notch — but they were in many ways more disappointing than if they totally sucked, because you could pretty easily see what could have been. The solution was so simple: just take more time, with more episodes, and yes, more seasons, to fully tell the story at the correct cadence and pace. Most shows do overstay their welcome — something Benioff and Weiss kept citing as a fear — this was the opposite and yes, worse in many ways.
And you can pretty easily see how it could happen. Benioff and Weiss had that fear but also had the urge to move on to what’s next after a decade buried under such a massive undertaking. They quickly signed not one, but multiple deals for their next projects (and still have yet to ship anything, I might add).
At the same time, Martin was under immense pressure to finish the penultimate — not even the final one! — book. The success of the show jacked this pressure up to the point where, well, he still hasn’t finished it! He started working on it in 2011 and had hoped to finish it in three years. Here we are 11 years later with a stated goal to finish it basically every year along the way. But you’ll note how focused he was (at one point) on releasing it before the start of season 6 of the show (the first post-Martin content). That was six years ago.
All I’m painting is a picture where it wasn’t just fully Benioff and Weiss’ fault. Again, in hindsight, they should have just handed over the reigns — perhaps to Ryan Condal, who is show running on House of the Dragon! — after season six. But would Martin have wanted Condal to do that anyway? He keeps saying he was cut out of the process, but you have to imagine he also wanted to tell the story his way, via the books, and so was leaving Benioff and Weiss out to dry a bit. Working with no scaffolding, as it were. Good luck boys!
Anyway, I still hope (and suspect) that eventually we will get the Martin versions of the final seasons of Game of Thrones, especially if House of the Dragon is a success (which it clearly already is and will be — it’s good!). And more time between the original Thrones and any new content based on his books (if/when finished) will only help. Perhaps a limited series based on Winds of Winter. (I would say a movie, but there’s no way 2+ hours would be long enough and we don’t want the same problem!) And then one based on A Dream of Spring. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves here…
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