Earlier this year, offscreen drama surrounding House of the Dragon season two threatened to eclipse what had happened in Westeros, as A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin—who’d notably kept quite during Game of Thrones‘ controversial final season in 2019—took to his blog to air out his frustrations with the prequel series.
Though he soon deleted his post, the sting was still felt over at HBO and by House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal. Since Martin’s biggest gripes revolved around changes made to the story in season two that he thinks will have a detrimental affect on characters down the road, both HBO and Condal’s responses to Martin’s post emphasized the fact that adaptations can and will take necessary liberties with their source material.
But while Martin has since said he’s done talking about House of the Dragon (though we’ll see if he holds to that once season three rolls around), he is eagerly awaiting another Thrones spin-off, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. With that in mind, it seems he and HBO are still on semi-decent terms… despite all that blood and cheese.
That’s a sentiment shared by HBO chief Casey Bloys, who was inevitably asked about the House of the Dragon dust-up at a recent HBO press conference, Deadline reported.
“[Martin is] very important to me, to us,” Bloys explained. “But when we put shows together, it’s like putting a marriage together. Marriages can be difficult, especially when Ryan Condal is making creative decisions and adapting work. It can be fraught. Any marriage can get rocky. I would prefer everybody get along, of course. But with the creative process, we are always going to have bumps. That’s to be expected.”
Bloys also confirmed a Game of Thrones-adjacent tidbit we already knew about: Kit Harington’s Jon Snow spin-off is no longer on the table—or the Wall, as the case may be. “We develop a lot of ideas. Sometimes they don’t work. We all agreed it didn’t come together,” Bloys said, though he did add the tiniest sprinkle of hope for all those Jon Snow superfans: “Maybe we’ll try again.”
At any rate, new series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms should be our next confirmed visit to Westeros, sometime in 2025.
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