George RR Martin Contradicts Himself On The Reason He Left ‘Game Of Thrones’

HBO and George RR Martin have joined forces to try to reassure fans that the pair have been collaborating once again to make House of the Dragon the type of Game of Thrones series that everyone wants to see.

As part of a press tour promoting the upcoming prequel series, Martin was asked about what happened with him and Game of Thrones the longer the series went on, but what he says does not line up at all with his past statements on the same issue.

“By Season 5 and 6, and certainly 7 and 8, I was pretty much out of the loop,” Martin told the New York Times. He was then asked why he became “estranged” from the show, to which he said “I don’t know — you have to ask Dan and David,” referring to DB Weiss and David Benioff, the showrunners.

So, the narrative here was the Martin was slowly cut out of the show by the showrunners who went on to effectively ruin the series by the end, thanks in part to the fact that Martin wasn’t around anymore.

Except, wait. I’m old enough to remember the original reason that Martin said he was scaling back from his duties on the show, and why he said he wasn’t writing more scripts past season 6.

This was from a blog post back in March of 2015, and this is what Martin said about the situation:

“After wrestling with it for a month or so, I’ve decided not to script an episode for season six of GAME OF THRONES. Writing a script takes me three weeks, minimum, and longer when it is not a straight adaptation from the novels. And really, it would cost me more time than that, since I have never been good at changing gears from one medium to another and back again. Writing a season six script would cost me a month’s work on WINDS, and maybe as much as six weeks, and I cannot afford that. With David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, and Bryan Cogman on board, the scriptwriting chores for season six should be well covered. My energies are best devoted to WINDS.”

Again, this is 2015, eight years ago, and we appear to be no closer to the release of Winds of Winter than we were back then, with Martin having blown so many deadlines at this point it’s just a meme in the industry and among Game of Thrones fans. It does seem disingenuous for him to say now that he was iced out by the showrunners when he originally said that he was moving away from the show to focus on writing Winds of Winter, which he has still not even come close to finishing, it seems.

It’s hard to know who to really trust here. I certainly agree that Weiss and Benioff destroyed the legacy they built with very bad, post-book content for the final few seasons of Game of Thrones. But I also really cannot take Martin at his word here with such a glaring contradiction in place, and how many promises he’s made about Winds over the years when he seems to be doing absolutely anything else.

Supposedly Martin did a whole lot of consulting for House of the Dragon, and this is not a Weiss and Benioff project. Regardless of all this drama, and even with how Game of Thrones ended, I am still looking forward to seeing what HBO and the team has come up with. But yes, like everyone, I have long stopped waiting for Winds of Winter by now.

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