The works of George R.R. Martin have been hugely influential on HBO, going back to Game of Thrones becoming a smash hit in 2011 to the successful launch of House of the Dragon to the upcoming debut of A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms in the 2026 TV schedule. While the author has only had good things to say about the new prequel and is slowly but surely working on continuing the Game of Thrones book saga, he wasn't so effusive about his "abysmal" relationship with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal.
It hasn't exactly been a secret that George R.R. Martin has had some issues with House of the Dragon after some dramatic comments regarding Season 2, which he followed up with some specific grievances about changes Ryan Condal made from the Fire & Blood source material to the screen. Now, the author has gotten candid about their working relationship, telling THR:
It’s worse than rocky. It’s abysmal. I hired Ryan. I thought Ryan and I were partners. And we were all through the first season. I would read early drafts of the scripts. I would give notes. He would change some things. It was working really well — I thought. Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me.
Ryan Condal was originally the co-showrunner of House of the Dragon, sharing the job with Game of Thrones director/producer Miguel Sapochnik until Sapochnik unexpectedly quit in early 2023. Significant changes from the book were evident in Season 2 as early as the premiere with its alterations to the memorable "Blood and Cheese" sequence, which was one of the alterations that Martin called out on his blog in 2024. He went on:
I would give notes, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he would explain why he wasn’t doing it. Other times, he would tell me, ‘Oh, OK, yeah, I’ll think about that.’ It got worse and worse, and I began to get more and more annoyed. Finally, it got to a point where I was told by HBO that I should submit all my notes to them and they would give Ryan our combined notes.
The blog post in which George R.R. Martin criticized the Blood and Cheese change that had huge implications for a character in future seasons was quickly removed, after an HBO exec contacted the author's team, who then contacted his manager, who then contacted his assistant to delete it. That doesn't mean he regrets his words, however, as he went on to tell THR:
I would’ve put it back up, but then I would’ve looked like an idiot. And 80 percent of it was praise, but that’s not what people focused on.
HBO CEO Casey Bloys responded to the critiques from George R.R. Martin months later, with a fairly diplomatic statement about Ryan Condal "making creative decisions" in "adapting work," and bumps are "to be expected" in "a creative process." Condal himself went a bit harder the next year, saying that as they "got deeper down the road," Martin "just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way."
For now, it's a waiting game to learn if House of the Dragon Season 3 will be any more faithful to Fire & Blood than Season 2 was. As a reader of the fictional history of the Targaryen dynasty, I will say that even if there are efforts to go back to the book's narrative, big changes will have to happen to get back on track.
The good news for book purists is that A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is set to be an incredibly faithful adaptation of George R.R. Martin's novella. Tune in to HBO on Sunday, January 18 at 10 p.m. ET for the series premiere of the new Game of Thrones prequel, which is set far enough after House of the Dragon that the two shows can be watched independently.
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