HBO's Game of Thrones will apparently end up very different from the books

HBO’s Game of Thrones will apparently end up very different from the books

July 14th 2017, 3:40pm

Last Updated on July 31, 2021

So the penultimate GAME OF THRONES season will finally premiere this Sunday, and I know I'm getting ready to watch it by whipping out my George R.R. Martin cookbook, getting some good wine, and having a party (of one, because I'm sad and lonely).

Speaking of George R.R. Martin, he recently had an interview with Time, where he talked at length about his novels and the show. There have always been questions of how the show influences the books, and vice-versa, but Martin but all that to rest:

The show is the show and it’s developed a life of its own at this point. I am involved in the show, of course, and have been since the beginning, but my main focus has got to be the books. You have to remember that I started writing this story in 1991 and I first met David and Dan [showrunners Benioff and Weiss] in 2007. I was living with these characters and this world for 16 years before we even started working on the show. They’re pretty fixed in my mind and I’m not going to change anything because of the show, or reaction to the show, or what fans think. I’m just still writing the story that I set out to write in the early 1990s.

This is actually good to know. There's nothing worse than changing things around just because people guessed where you're going or because you're trying to "outdo" something. It's nice to know he's sticking to his guns. He then went on to elaborate:

I can’t be influenced by the show. The show is great, but a television show and a novel are different things. The television show has real-world concerns that I don’t have. There’s a very big budget, it’s one of the largest budgets in television, but it’s still a budget, they can’t just keep adding characters. I can! They have actors’ contracts to consider, they have shooting schedules to consider, locations, all of that real-world stuff that I don’t really have to worry about.

That all makes sense. It's why plots (like Arya's) spinned its wheels while waiting for her plot to be relevant again. Hopefully with an expedited two seasons, and an end in sight, those sorts of things won't happen anymore. One can only hope. I for one can't wait to get drunk and eat some buttered quail!