George R.R. Martin Shames Game of Thrones' Writers - They Ruined Everything! (HBO)

Welcome back for another A Song of Ice and Fire and Game of Thrones season 8 update video. In this video, I will be talking about George R.R. Martin's former relationship with Game of Thrones writers, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. What is the real reason why they stopped working together after the 4th season of Game of Thrones? Why did George R.R. Martin stop talking about Game of Thrones, while it was the biggest show on television? Why did George R.R. Martin beg an HBO executive to make 10 seasons of Game of Thrones? Why does he no longer talk about the show that changed his life so much? Why has he thrown subtle jabs at them since leaving the show? Let's explore this a little bit in this video. Let me know your thoughts down below. Thanks for watching!

Images and video clips from Game of Thrones and House of the Dragon are property of their creators, used here under fair use.

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[fairdose]

Dan and Dave got an offer to work on the Star Wars franchise and that's when D&D decided to ditch GoT and end it as quickly as possible. They basically got greedy and impatient. That's when the writing on GoT took a nosedive and the ending pissed off everyone. Oh, and because GoT ended so badly, Lucasfilm then withdrew their offer to D&D so both of them ended up with nothing.

[thelasthero]

If we as fans hated the last season, just imagine how much George as the creator hated it

[ricktheexplorer]

I am glad to hear GRRM didn't like the last season any more than I did.

[vh]

HBO should have fired Dan and Dave the moment they started pushing for shorter seasons and episode counts. Hopefully they don't allow something like that to happen again. If you are arguing for that, then your heart clearly isn't in it anymore.

[BeneathTheGold]

George said there was plenty of material for more seasons but david and dan “wanted a life” and to do other things. Fair enough. Well and good. Then go have your life and do other things and let someone else continue with the extra seasons. Their attitude towards it seemed awfully selfish to me.

[BeteBlanc]

Every time I hear a promise for the last two books I kinda feel like Theon in his cell. You want to hear the words, but you know you can't trust them.

[Lyner_bersett]

If only we can pursue HBO to get new writers and re shoot the story after season 5. I'd watch it, 10 times over

[Xearrik]

I think the Hound relieving himself in the river that Lady Stoneheart was supposed to be pulled out of was a hard and public middle finger to George. I see that as a for sure cutoff point for him working with them at all.

[GenericTallGuy]

It’s his universe, these are his characters and this is his story. GRRM deserved a say in everything. EVERYTHING. He’s literally THE CREATOR. D&D destroyed what could been the greatest and the biggest show ever made with the last two seasons for whatever the reasons might have been. To a point where it has been erased from pop culture and no one talks about it anymore. It’s kinda sad coz I was a huuuuge GoT fan.

[PhotoTrekr]

Sounds like D&D started to believe they were responsible for the success of the show and thought they didn't need GRRM. And, of course, their own hubris resulted not only in their downfall but the downfall of the show as well.

[donna]

Interesting that GOT started going downhill once GRRM was out of the loop.

[sesshowmarumonoke]

Not to defend D&D, but GRRM wanted HBO to halt the show until he finished the books. He wanted HBO to sit atop the actors contracts for years - while paying them and the "kids" got older and the hype diminished year after year after year. He's an impractical man. It's impossible to make a show this expensive to last for 13 seasons. D&D did a bad job, yes. But GRRM also let us down.

[deanfirnatine]

Hollywood almost always does this with great novels, these directors/show runners think they know better than the award winning authors of these IP's, their egos are unreal. When will executives learn to rein these producers/show runners in and make them stick to the IP they spent a fortune to buy, look what the show runner did to the Witcher, she refused to stick to the books and destroyed the show. Thankfully Dan and Dave have hardly worked since the season 8 disaster.

[ninap]

I was thinking about George RRM tell once that The Red Wedding chapter was really hard for him to write and in fact he wrote the rest of the book first and came back to finish this chapter last. Just because it was emotionally the most difficult- killing off characters he loved and was attached to. Maybe this is similar with Winds. My understanding is that this book is likely meant to be the darkest of the series, with devastation, loss, despair throughout the seven kingdoms. It's probably not fun to write chapter after chapter of such bleak landscape, your beloved characters suffering and dying

[chelisue]

George doesnt need to be angry about it. There’s plenty of anger out here in the fandom. All he needs to do is WRITE❣️

[xoler]

Maybe my grandson will have the honor to read TWOW

[Opnnd]

Dan and Dave had One Job: To adapt the NOVELS in "A Song of Ice and Fire" into an HBO series. There's just one problem. Dan and Dave ran out of finished novels, and likely only had a cliff's notes equivalent of material for The Winds of Winter, and at the most, bullet points of events that had to happen in A Dream of Spring. Because Martin FAILED to deliver the remaining two books in his novel series. And now, even after all these years, he STILL hasn't finished ONE of the two books.

Also, I distinctly remember watching a video where Martin clearly stated that the way the show ended was pretty much the way the books would end, though he said that there would be more character perspectives in the books.

So tell me how it's really Dan and Dave's fault?

Their biggest mistake was undertaking the project when the source material wasn't anywhere near complete. I think they assumed that Martin would care enough about his career as a writer to actually get Winds of Winter and Dream of Spring done while the show was being produced.. I did the figures and determined that had he written something like 402 words a day, five days a week, he could have delivered Winds of Winter in the form of a novel the same length as A Game of Thrones by the midpoint of Season 4, and A Dream of Spring at the same length by end of Season 7. The gap between 7 and 8 would have allowed the final books full adaptation. But no. Martin didn't really even get started good with writing Winds of Winter until after the show ended. So Dan and Dave had no choice but to use the limited resources they had to write the ending of the story FOR martin. That wasn't their job.

I lay the failure of Season 7, and to a greater degree, Season 8 at Martin's feet. And if Martin was so unsatisfied with Dan and Dave's handling of the as-yet unwritten novels' material, then why didn't he, as an executive producer, step in and put them in their place and make sure they got it on track.

Remember, like I said, Martin said that the books would end like the show ended. So, he must not have been all that disappointed.

When you are adapting something, you shouldn't have to feel like you're having to lay down tracks in front of a moving train.

[cantabrian]

A couple of points. 1 - I doubt anyone will be arguing in any seriousness as to what the real ending will be as long as the written story is completed. 2 - the remark about actors perhaps wanting to go on to other projects - as much as that is true and bigger scale doesn't always mean better things, I can't think of a single actor who has been in anything remotely as popular by comparison to their roles in GoT, since the end of the show. Do we know if any of the actors actually felt 'done with' their roles and were happy it didn't go on longer? We know that Emilia and Kit both felt gutted personally and that might be an understatement.

[doble_]

This guy is 75 years old. The novel is 12 years late.
He will never finish it. There is only one end of GOT, the one in the TV series.

[izi]

It pisses me off that they already had the ending repeated constantly in Aegon Targaryen’s prophetic dream and it didn’t happen. It’s the most irritating thing ever. It makes the whole prophecy irrelevant.