Thread: George R. R. Martin confirms he’s 3/4 done with ‘Winds of Winter’
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crumbs
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I think GRRM was bored of this series a long time ago, probably even before the TV series started production. This is reflected in how mediocre "A Feast for Crows" and "A Dance with Dragons" ended up being and how much he shifted the story away from Westeros.
"A Storm of Swords" was the last good book in this series and it came out 23 years ago. I'd still read the next book, but my expectations are really low.
"A Storm of Swords" was the last good book in this series and it came out 23 years ago. I'd still read the next book, but my expectations are really low.
GreyHorace
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Martin has no cause to finish the books, since he earns much more being an executive producer to whatever series HBO adapts of his work. Last I read he earned $15 million for each season for Game of Thrones. So he'd rather look forward to the next season of House of the Dragon and the upcoming Dunk and Egg.
The books at this point are just a proverbial carrot on the stick he dangles in front of the horse that is the hardcore book fandom.
The books at this point are just a proverbial carrot on the stick he dangles in front of the horse that is the hardcore book fandom.
Goatmilk
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Hopefully his legacy is tarnished when he's found naked on the shitter without a pulse. Dude completely fumbled a generational thing and let the fame get to him.
If we weren't so fast to celebrate celebrities, he would be hated.
If we weren't so fast to celebrate celebrities, he would be hated.
Hinedorf
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You'd think with all that money and time on his hands he'd do something about the fact he looks like a living turd covered in body hair. If the fucker can't write he can certainly find a treadmill and razor.
Polden
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Lord do not make me that bitter when I'm that age. Get a grip, George. Go listen to Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire and realize that the world has always had a mirage of problems going on.
I don't know how anyone can read that blog post and be confident that he hasn't given up on completing ASoIaF. Good going, dude. You had a shot at etching your name next to the literature greats but instead you wasted time on forgettable TV spinoffs and art books that have more coffee stains on it than the amount of times it was opened. Your once beloved work is going to be completed by a writer looking for easy money and will give it a safe and boring ending that will make the Hallmark Movie channel proud.
Now go back to your couch and turn on CNN so the talking heads can tell you what to be mad about today.
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It's 5 years since the show ended, and they we're into working off your cliff notes around the 5th season, and you had a 10-year lead on them to get the books written. What part of pulling your finger out doesn't compute?
GreyHorace
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Just a whole lot of whining on why he won't finish the last 2 books.
Boohoo George. I'm sorry, but no one really gives a shit. We're all living in the same world right now and you don't hear us moaning about it because we have a job to do in order to keep living. Unlike you, who seems content to rest on his mountain of millions while dicking loyal readers with a conclusion that grows distant year after year.
For comparison's sake, your predecessor JRR Tolkien lived through the 2nd World War, an event that had a better chance to destroy civilization as we know it. Yet Tolkien never publicly whined about it and just went about doing his job at Oxford and writing his little side project about a certain Ring. So up yours you fat fuck.
I'm fairly certain he has said that if he dies so does the book series, as he loathes the idea of any sort of fan fiction. Which is the ultimate fuck you to the Book faithful. The irony of course is that it's the gruesome Twosome from Westeros,org who purport to represent The Book Faithful who've been heavily involved in cojoling GRRM into sidecar projects like the coffee table books to line their own pockets in the process. They've managed to make a great deal of money hanging off his coattails and no doubt will continue to after his death sucking on the teat of being his 'advisers'.
People forget that their principal motivation when it came to reaching out to him way back when was to pitch him on letting them create an RPG set in Westeros and that was the basis of all of their knowledge about the books. They weren't experts because they were fans, they were experts because they wanted to make a business deal with him. Because he was so impressed with their research he made the fatal mistake of bringing them in as his fact-checkers and that's when his productivity in terms of output coincidently went down the shitter.
Before their involvement, he was delivering a book every two years, which isn't bad from a writer's perspective, but suddenly that period ballooned up to 5 years with a Feast for Crows, a further 6 years for a Dance with dragons, and we are now 13 years on and 5 years on since the series ended with the Winds of Winter still AWOL. Worst of all the last two books were turgid messes, both of which introduced far too many viewpoint characters, most of whom are undoubtedly going to be irrelevant to the main plot. On top of that ADWD barely moved the actual narrative forward, because he has far too many cards to now shuffle.
A lot of people give the showrunners of GoT a lot of shit. and albeit I agree they fucked a lot of things up rushing the show in the last two seasons versus maybe extending it over 3, what a lot of people don't get is that even during Season 5 the showrunners were largely having to work off of GRRMs synopsis because they'd run out of book material to adapt (John Snow is still very much dead in the books). On top of that, they'd had to compress and streamline certain storylines from a production perspective which isn't the case in the books (Sansa wasn't married to Ramsey Bolton versus some Rando Winterfell Housemaid made up as her). Meaning that there's still a whole bunch of convoluted threads that need to be tied up.
It's honestly hard to see how Steamboat Willie could wrap it all up even with two 1000-page volumes, esp with those two money goblins sitting on his shoulder making sure he mentions every lord, lady, and chair sniffer, in every scene as well as the endless food lists. No one cares how many Lemoncakes are on the table George, cut to the chase.
Hinedorf
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I totally forgive Benioff and Weiss at this point. They had to finish their own epic with cliff notes not because they wanted to but because of GRRM. GRRM already admitted he changed some characters in the books because of some of the minor characters popularity on TV.
There's a reason Benioff and Weiss tried to wrap it up at an accelerated pace. It's because they were tired of GRRM as all of his most loyal fans have become for the very same reason as those 2 guys.......WE'RES THE MATERIAL GEORGE?!
I actually have a far greater respect for how Game of Thrones ends, it could've been a lot worse than what we got. Much like the Sopranos I feel like it was intentionally left open ended for a return to the well. Likely something GRRM wouldn't have done with his books but it's likely we'll never really know.
O-N-E
Yep, that's a good
hell fucking no I will not give them any sort of break.
Writers have faced this situation before and have been able to pull it off. Hell, some of the entirely original episodes in Game of Thrones were great. Like Hardhome.
The original Full Metal Alchemist series had only like a third of the full story at most to work with and they still pulled off a compelling story all the way until the end.
I think the biggest criticism would be that the pace of the show was accelerated in the final 2 seasons which was a huge mistake, and certain aspects that could have dome with a bit more breathing room felt rushed. Truthfully though they were unfortunately getting fucked from both ends given the talent had all renegotiated their contracts after the 5th season (as is standard) and some of them were hoovering up the shows budget like nobody's business (Lene Headey in particular) and even Game of Thrones had a budget. When you're paying your actors by the episode yet you've got to budget for massive battles and armies of extras, how do you cut costs? Fewer episodes (as Stannis would say).
Even at its height the show never broke $100 million in terms of budget, which frankly is surprisingly modest these days compared to the budget of other series (225m on Shehulk...LMAO). House of the Dragon for instance is running at $20 Million per episode due to the increased CGI, and HBO is happy to pay it. Still, the show isn't destined to run past 4 seasons, so at least they aren't going to get assfucked by the Actors dramatically upping their salary demands.
I don't think anyone anticipated GOT being as wildly successful as it was so HBO wasn't smart enough to lock the actors into an upper limit on salary renegotiations at the time, and of course, the actors given the show's popularity had them over a barrel. Not to say that the actors are to blame entirely, but more that the financial overhead likely didn't help matters.
Still, I'd say the lack of solid book material to adapt was first and foremost the big issue. They had a lot of actors they needed to keep busy and some aspects hit (the Brienne, Tormund, & Jamie stuff) and some missed (Sansa/Arya and Littlefinger) . Even if it meant having maybe a slight pause in production it would have been wiser in retrospect to have spent more time fleshing out the conclusion over 3 seasons and paced the action accordingly versus bum rush it like they did. Things like Dany's seeming heel turn at the end would have made more sense contextually if the audience were reminded of the more manic Dany of earlier seasons for instance.
Still, it is what it is. Maybe in ten years, they'll use AI tech to redo the last couple of seasons or some such. Add in extra scenes and lose some of the daftness. I dare say as long as the actors get paid for their likenesses and voices being used they'd be more than happy to be involved.
Stifler's Mom
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They're ultimately responsible for how the show turned out. However, I think the expectation was from both Benioff & Weiss and HBO when they first penned the GOT development contract with GRRM back in 2007 (4 years before the first season even aired) and gave him an Exec Producer role on the project that he would be incentivized to focus his time and attention on bringing the book series to a timely conclusion so they could adapt it fully versus instead pissing away his massive lead in on the venture to do anything but that. His inability to knuckle down and Do the work as Steven Pressfield would say was widely mocked even in the mainstream media.
The guy had the potential to go down as one of the great writers but instead has turned himself into a laughing stock. I don't think he has it in him to bring the series to a conclusion before he punches his ticket and he really only has himself to blame for getting embroiled with the money leeches from Westeros.org dragging him into sidecar projects as well as naive apologists like Neil Gaiman giving him the green light to squander his time away.
Polden
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I understand that D&D were in an impossible spot with GoT. Though they still deserved the flack because they were ready to take deals for Star Wars and other big IP's. It's like when the star player leaves so now we're about to learn how good this coach really is. Once GRRM's world building, characters, and set pieces were out of the picture, we learned the skills of D&D. They are good businessmen that jumped on an opportunity to adapt a series that can be great on the screen, I'll give them that but not much else.