George R.R. Martin, the writer of Game of Thrones, has talked about his conflict with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, calling it “worse than rocky” and “abysmal.” Condal’s creative liberties for the show clashed with the author. Although Martin’s dissatisfaction with the ongoing plot of House of the Dragon is not completely unfamiliar, a profile article released by The Hollywood Reporter features startling new information from Martin regarding the unraveling of his relationship with Condal and the degree to which HBO executives had to oversee the two behind each stage of the show’s filming.
Martin’s dissatisfaction with Condal seems to have peaked during a heated Zoom conversation where the show’s creator presented his ideas for the third season of House of the Dragon. Martin claimed that after raising multiple concerns about Condal’s idea, he finally declared, “This is not my story any longer.”
“I hired Ryan,” Martin said, reminiscing on the sunnier aspects of their relationship. “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.”
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When Condal had a breakdown with Miguel Sapochnik, another fellow showrunner on the series, at the conclusion of season one, Martin first showed support for him, according to the profile article. Martin claims that Sapochnik left the show soon after Condal requested the latter’s support.
Martin went on to say, “Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me,” describing the decline in his relationship with Condal. “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.”
He added, “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.”
This resulted in Martin’s disreputable and now-removed blog post from September 2024, in which he publicly denounced the course of House of the Dragon and predicted further “toxic” changes from his books.
Martin criticized the storyline decision to kill off a specific character and explained why he disapproved of it, all the while praising the series’ storytelling, structure, and performance. Martin also implied at the time that Condal had broken his pledge to counterbalance the shift with another story aspect, which had since appeared to be dropped. “I would’ve put it back up, but then I would’ve looked like an idiot,” Martin referred to it. “And 80 percent of it was praise, but that’s not what people focused on.”
