George R.R. Martin almost agreed to make a Game of Thrones animated series

Game of Thrones fans have sometimes thrown around the idea of what it would be like to have an animated version of the story. Turns out it almost happened.

Game of Thrones is over, but fans aren’t done talking about it. After all, even if we’ve gotten all of the show we’re going to get, it left out a ton of stuff from George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books, and in the wake of the less-than-stellar reception to the eighth and final season, I’ve seen more than a few people talking about the possibility of another adaptation down the line.

One of the popular ideas is for an animated take on the material. In theory, that would allow for more of Martin’s original story to make it to the screen, since there wouldn’t be as many budgetary limitations.

And believe it or not, something like that actually almost happened. Fansite Los Siete Reinos, always on top of these things, went and found a comment Martin left on his Not a Blog in 2015, responding to a fan asking if Martin had ever been approached by anyone who wanted to make an animated version of A Song of Ice and Fire:

"Yes. Often.In fact, one of the proposed feature deals I turned down before HBO was from a major animator. Odd thing is, I might have accepted that offer… I was on the fence… until an exec I was supposed to meet failed to turn up for a lunch we had scheduled to discuss their approach. I did get an apology, later… but being stood up pushed me off the fence back into “No” land."

Oh my god, executives, what are you doing not showing up to a business lunch with George R.R. Martin with the film rights to A Song of Ice and Fire on the line? Get your life together.

Martin has talked before about how he was approached over the years by several studios wanting to make movies based on A Song of Ice and Fire, but he turned them all down, usually because they wanted to cut out big parts of his story. It’s interesting to hear that he was earnestly entertaining this offer. I wonder how it was different and who was making it. Not Disney, surely; they’re “a major animator,” all right, but you’d think A Song of Ice and Fire works a little too blue for them.

In any case, HBO now likely owns the screen rights to pretty much anything related to A Song of Ice and Fire, so if we’re ever going to get an animated series, it’ll have to come from them, or they’ll have to approve it.

They did kind of give us a preview of what an ASOIAF cartoon might look like on the Dance of the Dragons special feature on the Game of Thrones season 5 Blu-ray collection. Maybe this could point the way towards something else?

Or if you’d like the show to go in a more anime-inspired direction…

In the meantime, HBO is making a live-action show all about the Dance of the Dragons, so I guess that will have to satisfy for the moment.

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