House of The Dragon showrunner shared every outline with George R.R. Martin to keep it faithful to the books

The main problem every fantasy fan had with Game of Thrones Season 8 was its departure from its soul; it felt rushed, filled with plotholes, and overall didn’t feel like something George R. R. Martin would write. While most blame David Benioff and D. B. Weiss for the controversial finale, one cannot rule out the fact they didn’t even have a source material to follow after A Dance with Dragons. House of The Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal wants to avoid all of that by going straight to the author, George R. R. Martin.

Appearing recently on the Coupledom podcast, Condal said, “That fateful meeting in Sante Fe and me picking up that paperback of Game of Thrones back in 2001 in Barnes and Nobles when I was touring the fantasy aisle, it all kind of came into alignment that day, and started us on this wild journey we’re on. For me, it was all about trust.”

“It was a unique writing relationship because George was the author of the source material. And I promised him from the outset that I am going to render as faithful an adaptation of the material as I can, understanding that certain things have to shift, and change, and be invented because we’re putting this into a visual medium. It’s no longer a history book.”

“So for me it was a trust building exercise. And the way Miguel and I approached the show was as fans of the original show. So what we’re all trying to do is create the thing that we as fans would want to see. For me as a fan that meant a very faithful adaptation. So I was very lucky in this case, I had George’s ear. I shared every outline that I wrote with him for the pilot, and every draft of the pilot I wrote. And then once that started getting going and HBO was happy, I think George was happy and knew where the story was going and what the plan was.”

Condal continued, “So that’s what I really try to do. Keep him as abreast to the information as I could. Then at some point we wrote a series bible, and he came to Los Angeles to join us and heard how all of that was going. So I think at every step of the way, he always knew where the story was going. So with me it was always keeping him involved and keeping his eyes on it as much as I could because I felt like if George blessed this and said this is good, or we debated something and it’s not the thing he wanted and kind of compromised on kind of a mutual solution, then I felt like I had done my job as the author of the adaptation.”

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