Ryan Condal was George R.R. Martin’s choice for House of The Dragon because ‘he knew about the books and loves fantasy’

Game of Thrones prequel House of The Dragon is right around the corner, and fans worldwide are excited to return to the world of Westeros. However, after the Season 8 disaster of Game of Thrones, the credibility of the once great franchise stands on shaken grounds, even though HBO and George R. R. Martin both have a good feeling about the prequel. Martin is particularly delighted over HBO picking Ryan Condal as the showrunner, having worked with him earlier in Game of Thrones.

Martin recently made an appearance on the Coupledom podcast, and explained why he is happy to have Condal on the team, “Mostly when I would come out to L.A. once or twice a year, we would have drinks at the Four Seasons in Beverly Hills and just talk about what we were doing. And over these dinners and these meetings, I learned certain things about Ryan. Number one, he liked my work which was good.”

“He knew a lot about my world because he’d read all the books about Westeros.”

“He knew a lot about fantasy in general…Meanwhile, at the same time, HBO was gearing up to try – they could see that Game of Thrones was ending – they wanted a successor show. I pitched them several ideas and one of them was the Targaryen civil war, which I call the Dance of the Dragons. But we did have other writers – you know how this business works – we went through some other writers. Some of them didn’t get very far, some of them got considerably far and did good work. But at one point we found ourselves without a writer and…we were at the Four Seasons, and I thought ‘hey, you would be great for this.”

Martin continued, “Yes, I was very happy that Ryan knew my world so well. Because HBO also put into production four other shows with four other writers who were excellent writers. Their television and film credits were excellent, [but] they didn’t really know my books.”

“Now I got to admit I’m not the most objective guy in this discussion, I’m the author of the original material. When you get a writer who is hired to do an adaptation but is not familiar with the material…in some cases they hire people who don’t even like the original material. And you have language in Hollywood, ‘I’m going to make it my own. I have my own vision for this,’ and that sort of thing.

Not even discussing my work but discussing myself as a viewer, as a consumer of things, if I go to see The Great Gatsby, I don’t want someone’s take on The Great Gatsby. I don’t want them to make it their own. I want Scott Fitzgerald brought to life in front of my face. I want Daisy and Tom and Gatsby, and the roaring 20’s. And you don’t always get that, so to be able to work with someone like Ryan – not just that he knew my books – the fact that he knew fantasy and loved fantasy was a big thing.”

Do you think Ryan Condal will do justice to Martin’s work? Tell us in the comments below!