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When the first season of Game of Thrones was released, showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff had four novels of George R.R. Martin’s sprawling fantasy epic to draw upon. The fifth novel, A Dance with Dragons, was released just months after the premiere. At the time, Martin believed that he would be able to complete the sixth novel before the series overtook him. As we know, the show started to run out of published material by the fifth season, and The Winds of Winter still isn’t complete. Although Weiss and Benioff were aware of the general beats of the story, you would imagine that you would want to keep the creator closer than ever as you entered unchartered territory… but no.
The early seasons of Game of Thrones included George R.R. Martin quite a bit. A report from The New York Times states that the author “wrote and read scripts, consulted on casting decisions and visited sets,” but when he stepped back to focus on The Winds of Winter, he grew estranged from the show, so much so that by “Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8,” Martin said that he was “pretty much out of the loop.” When asked why, Martin responded, “I don’t know — you have to ask Dan and David.” Martin also believed that there was more than enough material to stretch the story out to ten seasons of ten episodes each. Martin’s agent said last year that the author flew out in person to ask former HBO CEO Richard Pleper to do ten seasons.
George would fly to New York to have lunch with Plepler, to beg him to do ten seasons of ten episodes because there was enough material for it and to tell him it would be a more satisfying and more entertaining experience.
D.B. Weiss and David Benioff wanted to call it quits and move on to other projects. “Dan and Dave were tired, rightfully so,” Haas said. “They were done, and wanted to move on, so they cut it short and then negotiations became, how many seasons can we stretch this out? Because of course HBO wanted more.” When it comes to the upcoming Game of Thrones prequel series, House of the Dragon, Martin is much more involved. “George, for us, in this process has been a really valuable resource,” HBO’s chief content officer Casey Bloys said. “He is literally the creator of this world. He is its historian, its creator, its keeper. And so I can’t imagine doing a show that he didn’t believe in or didn’t endorse.“
House of the Dragon is set hundreds of years before the original series and is based upon George R.R. Martin’s Fire & Blood, a Targaryen history book which chronicles the history of House Targaryen, starting off with “Aegon the Conqueror, creator of the Iron Throne, and [going on] to recount the generations of Targaryens who fought to hold the throne, all the way up to the civil war, known as the Dance of the Dragons, that nearly tore their dynasty apart.” House of the Dragon will debut on HBO on August 21st.
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