As any professional writer will tell you, missing deadlines can be a big deal, but it’s generally not cause for international headlines.
That is, unless you’re George R.R. Martin, author of the fantasy novels that inspired HBO’s gargantuan hit “Game of Thrones.” Earlier this month, the 67-year-old writer sent his obsessive fans into fits of hysteria by announcing he had yet to complete the long-awaited fifth installment of his “A Song of Ice and Fire” series. This means that when the Emmy-winning drama returns for a sixth season on April 24, the narrative will move ahead of Martin’s published books.
And it will keep on moving: HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo told reporters at the winter gathering of the Television Critics Association that the premium cable network was close to a deal for seasons 7 and 8 of the series.
By surpassing their source material in such dramatic fashion, show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are in a sticky situation without precedent in the television business, one that has stoked concerns the series will now “spoil” Martin’s remaining books, and raised thorny questions about creative authorship.
So far the network has had no comment on the matter, but there can be little doubt it’s caused some anxiety. Since premiering in 2011, “Game of Thrones” has become a vital asset for HBO. It is the most-watched program in the network’s history, with an average of 20 million weekly viewers in its fifth season, and one of its most acclaimed, winning the Emmy for drama series along with 11 other Emmys in September and setting a record for awards won by a series in a single season.
The “Game of Thrones” predicament, rare though it is, highlights the many complications that arise when adapting television series from popular books or other well-known source materials — an increasing phenomenon in an age when more and more outlets are dabbling in ambitious scripted drama.
Spoilers can also be a concern for shows based on texts published years ago. That’s certainly true for “Game of Thrones,” with book readers often delighting in their knowledge of future plot twists.
Now the situation is reversed.
Even without the complications created by Martin’s missed deadline, Weiss and Benioff faced a Herculean feat in adapting the author’s sprawling books.
As Martin has missed deadline after deadline, fans have voiced their displeasure online, often criticizing the writer for his involvement in other projects — even for writing occasional episodes of the TV series.
The news that the series would move past the books is not exactly a surprise to those who’ve followed Martin’s progress. By his own admission, Martin is a slow writer, and his books are massive, usually clocking in at over a thousand pages. The last novel in the series, “A Dance With Dragons,” was published five years later than originally planned.
“The Winds of Winter” isn’t even the last book in the series; Martin has at least one more planned.
The panic may be overblown; it’s not as if Benioff and Weiss are flying blind. In 2014 the writers told Vanity Fair they’d met with Martin to discuss the ending of the saga and plot the seasons ahead. At the time, Martin said he’d already worked out the broad strokes of the story, if not the precise details.
“If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character,” Benioff recalled.
In his message last week, Martin acknowledged it was a unique situation for a television series to outpace the books on which it’s based, but urged fans not to freak out.
“You might prefer one over the other,” he wrote, “but you can still enjoy the hell out of both.”
Talk to us
> Give us your news tips.
> Send us a letter to the editor.
> More Herald contact information.
