'It's Abysmal' — Game of Thrones Writer George R. R. Martin Candidly Reveals 'Worse Than Rocky' Relationship With House of the Dragon Showrunner After Rows Over Characters and Plot

Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin has discussed his breached narration with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, which the writer has candidly described arsenic "worse than rocky" and "abysmal."

While Martin's displeasure with House of the Dragon's ongoing communicative improvement is thing new, a illustration portion published contiguous by The Hollywood Reporter includes eye-opening caller item from Martin connected the breakdown of his narration with Condal — and the grade to which HBO executives had to negociate the brace down the scenes of the show's production.

Martin's unhappiness with Condal appears to person reached its zenith during a contentious Zoom telephone wherever the showrunner laid retired his imaginativeness for House of the Dragon's 3rd season. Martin said helium responded to Condal's program with galore objections, and yet stated: "This is not my communicative immoderate longer."

"I hired Ryan," Martin said, reflecting connected happier times. "I thought Ryan and I were partners. And we were each done the archetypal season. I would work aboriginal drafts of the scripts. I would springiness notes. He would alteration immoderate things. It was moving truly good — I thought."

The illustration portion notes an archetypal show of enactment by Martin for Condal towards the extremity of play one, erstwhile the second had a falling retired with his chap co-showrunner connected the series, Miguel Sapochnik. Martin says Condal asked for his support, which helium gave, and Sapochnik departed the amusement soon afterward.

"Then we got into play two, and helium fundamentally stopped listening to me," Martin continued, discussing however his narration with Condal began to deterioate. "I would springiness notes, and thing would happen. Sometimes helium would explicate wherefore helium wasn't doing it. Other times, helium would archer me, 'Oh, OK, yeah, I'll deliberation astir that.'

"It got worse and worse, and I began to get much and much annoyed. Finally, it got to a constituent wherever I was told by HBO that I should taxable each my notes to them and they would springiness Ryan our combined notes."

George R.R. Martin. Image credit: Gerald Matzka/Getty Images.

This past led to the now-infamous and swiftly-deleted blog station penned by Martin successful September 2024, which publically criticized House of the Dragon's absorption and said much "toxic" changes from his books were to come. While offering praise for the series' writing, absorption and acting, Martin slammed the crippled determination to termination disconnected a peculiar quality and went into item arsenic to wherefore helium disagreed with the choice. At the time, Martin besides suggested Condal had gone backmost connected a committedness to equilibrium the alteration with different crippled constituent — that had past seemingly been abandoned.

Within hours, the blog station disappeared from Martin's website, and HBO had issued a connection supporting Condal portion attempting to little the temperature. In today's illustration piece, Martin says the blog station disappeared aft HBO contacted Martin's manager, who had Martin's adjunct region the station portion Martin himself was asleep.

"I would've enactment it backmost up, but past I would've looked similar an idiot," Martin said of the incident. "And 80 percent of it was praise, but that's not what radical focused on."

For his part, Condal has chosen not to remark further connected the situation, but has pointed to a previously-reported connection helium gave which claimed that Martin had go "unwilling to admit the applicable issues astatine manus successful a tenable way."

Martin is present backmost moving connected the amusement successful immoderate capacity, though the writer said helium was incapable to remark connected the specifics.

"George and Ryan had a disagreement connected the absorption of play three," an HBO root told The Hollywood Reporter. "At that point, it was wide that the process and connection with them was breached and needed a reset. So determination was people a play wherever everyone took a measurement backmost for a portion until we could fig retired a caller mode forward."

As portion of the aforesaid piece, caller details person travel to airy connected different HBO task — a projected Game of Thrones sequel bid starring Arya Stark. Still successful its aboriginal stages of development, the thought would seemingly regenerate erstwhile plans to make a spin-off based astir Jon Snow.

Image credit: Gerald Matzka/Getty Images.

Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You tin scope Tom astatine [email protected] oregon find him connected Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social