George R. R. Martin Says It’s Annoying When TV Adaptations Don’t Stick to the Source Material: “They change things and I don’t think they generally improve them."
The literary giant caught up with The Hollywood Reporter on four films he's self-financed, all based on the short stories of Howard Waldrop, and yes — where that final 'Thrones' novel is at.
He has made his bank and has no major incentive to finish the series. It’s been 13 years, the guy is 76, and he’s supposedly got two books left to go.
My money is on Sanderson getting handed the notes after Martin dies and bringing the series to an unsatisfying conclusion because, at this point, nothing will be satisfying.
Sanderson was a huge Wheel of Time fan which is part of why he could take over and finish that series. The dude reread the series after every book came out. I don't know if he's as huge of a fan of Game of Thrones.
You know what else is annoying? When an author writes five out of six wildly popular books and leaves his fans hanging after they committed over ten years into reading them.
The Last of Us changed the Bill character for the better. Thats only one example though. Fight Club comes to mind, even Palahniuk said Fincher made a good changes
Eh, I view it more as "This is a better, but different Bill." There's a place for paranoid hoarding weirdos in your zombie stories, don't take that away from them.
Neil Druckman said that nothing is allowed to be changed unless it’s an improvement on the game’s story. I think it’s really important to have the initial writer/creator’s input on everything. Too many movies and TV shows just stray too far from the source material and disappoint everyone.
Since the shitty ending he wanted tested so poorly, he should pivot. White walkers win, fuck the world. Heroes don’t always win. He’s kinda of that opinion already
I'd always thought that the theme was that the White Walkers weren't a world ender: it'd just end pseudo-Britain. The world is a bigger place than your corner of it, no matter how important it seems to you.
The thing is, with enough background and time many of the endings we got make sense.
Bran becoming King. Makes sense if planned out by Bloodraven. He's been slowly moving things around and controlling the fates of others to ensure he is in control when the white walkers attack. (It's possible it will be more of a dictator situation rather than king, or he will control/heavily advise whomever is the "king")
Dany going "mad". (f)Aegon is a huge problem for her conquest. She has been told her whole life she is meant to save Westeros. She has put in all the time and effort. She has dragons. But is she a savior or a conqueror?
Jon ultimately killing Dany. A lot will change in the lead up, but it probably roughly plays our similarly.
Varys killed by Dany. I assume related to the (f)Aegon plot. He isn't going to join Dany in Essos. He'll just be on the wrong side of things.
There is plenty more. The issue of course is that you need A LOT more story you need to tell. And the books have a lot more characters. And we need to rewind a handful of stories that show already closed off much earlier. So I understand that there is a lot to write. But also, I agree it's been soooooo long.
"... without asking how he’s balancing these projects with the long-awaited sixth and final book, The Winds of Winter, in his A Song of Ice and Fire series."
If only... I might have hopes if he only had Winds to finish. But there's also A Dream of Spring and that will never see the light of day. At least not written by Martin.
I sometimes wonder how far he got, then saw the negative reaction to the end of GoT and went Sod it, I'm not rewriting all of that ...
My personal conspiracy theory is that they’re mostly done and he’s just going to wait to release them when he’s dead. Then he doesn’t have to hear everyone bitching about it lol
My theory is that they aren't near done. They will be finished by a publisher after he's dead using AI. They will be awful but everyone will buy them anyway.
Then there will be a new miniseries based on the books after around 10 years that they'll call a reboot and definitive edition. This miniseries will probably be directed by AI. And it will be SHIT. And they'll make tons of money.