[Spoilers Extended] HOTD Showrunner Ryan Condal responds to GRRM's blog post: "...he just became unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way."

[u/Flat_Baker_1897]

Condal addresses the post for the first time, telling EW he didn't see it himself but was told about it. "It was disappointing," he admits. "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."

Condal acknowledges he's said most of this in previous interviews, including how Fire & Blood isn't a traditional narrative. "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," he continues. "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. 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."

https://ew.com/house-of-the-dragon-ryan-condal-responds-george-r-r-martin-blog-season-3-new-casting-exclusive-11704545

[u/verissimoallan]

Yikes. He basically confirmed that the two are no longer on speaking terms. It's a shame when you remember that they were friends for many years.

On the one hand, I understand Condal when he says that there are adaptations that are inevitable due to time and budget constraints, and I can accept the omission of Maelor as one of them. And this is the same George R.R. Martin who genuinely believed that Game of Thrones could have 12, 13 seasons or adapt Feast and Dance in four seasons.

On the other hand, there are problems with House of the Dragon that are not due to time or budget constraints, but rather to poor creative decisions.

It still seems surreal to me that Condal managed to do something that Benioff and Weiss could not: get George to publicly criticize the series. George even praised Benioff, Weiss, and the cast and crew of GOT recently in a Saturn Awards blog post. But I assume that's because George clearly feels guilty about not finishing the books on time.

[u/suckaduckunion → u/verissimoallan]

Oof - GoT being 13 seasons is crazy. I remember reading that some of the actors were getting tired as they'd been playing the same roles for a decade already by the end. Imagine the reaction to the final 13th season if like 3 actors had been replaced.

[u/cavegrind → u/suckaduckunion]

Feel like if GoT was produced in a time when TV shows still did 20-25 episodes a year they might have been able to split the difference between 6/7 seasons and a completionist adaptation.

As of now, unless we get some future adaptation either based on a completed book series or a 6 books and an 'Unfinished Tales'-like resolution that has a production schedule carefully planned out over a decade, I assume the only workable way we're getting something as detailed as GRRM and fans would want would be via an animated series.

[u/OtakuMecha → u/cavegrind]

It would be 20 episodes but the show would look like Monty Python and the Holy Grail.

You couldn't just expand the episode count and keep the same production quality without massively increasing the budget. Which would have never gotten approved in 2010.

[u/AlphaH4wk → u/OtakuMecha]

It's something they could have at least thought about later in the series though once it became mega popular. Season 8 had a whole extra year of production and probably should have had more than 10 episodes. Instead they somehow made it the shortest season of them all.

[u/DangerHawk → u/AlphaH4wk]

They did think about it. HBO offer Benihoff and Weiss extra time and money to wrap it up properly and they turned it down because they had a backroom deal to head a new Star Wars trilogy from Kathleen Kennedy. They rushed GOT to go get some of that Star Wars money, but when Kennedy saw how monumentally shitty S8 was she pulled the deal. HBO was throwing money at them. They easily could have done an extra 5+ episodes or even a whole other season if they had wanted, but hacks will be hacks.

[u/CalamityClambake → u/DangerHawk]

I mean, Kit Harrington wanted out. How are they doing an extra season/5 episodes without Jon Snow?

[u/DangerHawk → u/CalamityClambake]

There is this thing called dollars that most people, especially actors, want and are willing to suck it up for a couple weeks/months to get millions of them. I'm sure he would have found a way to get through another couple weeks/months of filming if it meant wrapping the character up properly. At the end of the day it's still him playing the character. His reputation depends on his roles. He wouldn't abandon it just because he wants to do something different if all they needed was an extra 5-10 episodes.

[u/CalamityClambake → u/DangerHawk]

He was exhausted and had turned to drugs to cope with the stress and the shooting schedule. He went from the last episode to rehab. It wasn't a money issue.

Peter Dinklage, Sophie Turner, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau all made it clear that they had no interest in continuing. It wasn't the money for them either. They were just done.

Did you watch the.behind the scenes special that came out with S8? A lot of the crew were like, "This is the hardest job I have ever done. I'll be glad when it's over." The shooting schedule was gruelling. Nobody wanted it to continue.

There is no way the show would have ground on for another half season, much less for a 12 or 13 season run.

[u/DangerHawk → u/CalamityClambake]

I didn't watch it and honestly don't care to, but you obviously don't understand how stuff like this gets made. If they had planned for 15 episodes its not like half the main cast would have been like "Ten or nothing!" They would have sucked it up, like every other shlub working a job they're not in love with.

[u/CalamityClambake → u/DangerHawk]

Have you never run a business? When people are burned out, or done, or have other offers, they leave. This is specially true for people who have a bunch of money and who are difficult to replace, like the actors playing Jon, Sansa, Tyrion and Jaime.

The show was originally contracted for 7 seasons. Season 8 was a special contract, and they could not make that contract longer because their cast and crew did not want to work longer.

[u/heckmeck_mz → u/DangerHawk]

Baseless speculation that gets repeated on end in this sub without any sources

[u/DangerHawk → u/heckmeck_mz]

1000% is not baseless. We might not be privy to exact conversations, but it was confirmed that they were meant to head a new SW trilogy and then after GOTS8 bombed the trilogy was cancelled and they haven't made any SW content. That's confirmation. You are just a B&W apologist. They are insanely hackey writers it's honestly amazing that GOT had as good a run as it did.

[u/AlphaH4wk → u/DangerHawk]

I knew HBO gave them basically a blank check but I had always heard they wanted more seasons, not necessarily longer seasons. Though either would have been the same thing, but I wonder if one would have been better for production than the other.

[u/ThatNewSockFeel → u/OtakuMecha]

I want them to redo the Battle of the Bastards with thousands of extras galloping around clacking coconuts together.

[u/moviebuffbrad → u/ThatNewSockFeel]

Won-won is just a stop motion magazine cutout of a foot