House of the Dragon Showrunner Responds to George R.R. Martin’s Criticisms of HBO Show

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House of the Dragon Showrunner Responds to George R.R. Martin’s Criticisms of HBO Show

House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal has responded to George R.R. Martin‘s previous criticisms of the show, saying that the legendary author wasn’t willing to understand the issues in turning the book into a TV show.

What did the House of the Dragon showrunner say about George R.R. Martin?

Speaking with Entertainment Weekly in a recent interview, Condal opened up about Martin’s most recent criticisms. Last year, the author wrote on his blog that he would share “everything that’s gone wrong” with the show, and seemed to be fairly critical over the second season of the series, which was received well, but criticized for drawing out some of aspects of Martin’s book.

Condal said seeing the criticisms were “disappointing,” especially because he’s been such a fan of Martin’s work throughout his entire life, something he says has not changed at all.

“It was disappointing,” Condal said. “I will simply say I’ve been a fan of ‘A Song of Ice and Fire’ for almost 25 years now, and working on the show has been truly one of the great privileges of, not only my career as a writer, but my life as a fan of science-fiction and fantasy. George himself is a monument, a literary icon in addition to a personal hero of mine, and was heavily influential on me coming up as a writer.”

As far as what might have gone wrong with the show, Condal notes that he believes that Martin just didn’t fully understand that Fire & Blood, the work that House of the Dragon is based on, was going to require a more relaxed form of adaptation due to the book not being a straightforward novel, but rather various historical texts.

“It’s this incomplete history and it requires a lot of joining of the dots and a lot of invention as you go along the way,” said Condal. “I will simply say, I made every effort to include George in the adaptation process. I really did. Over years and years. And we really enjoyed a mutually fruitful, I thought, really strong collaboration for a long time. But at some point, as we got deeper down the road, he just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way. And I think as a showrunner, I have to keep my practical producer hat on and my creative writer, lover-of-the-material hat on at the same time.”

Condal went on to say that, at the end of the day, he has to just keep moving forward with the project, and hopes that George will “rediscover” the harmony between both.

“At the end of the day, I just have to keep marching not only the writing process forward, but also the practical parts of the process forward for the sake of the crew, the cast, and for HBO, because that’s my job. So I can only hope that George and I can rediscover that harmony someday. But that’s what I have to say about it.”