Making a rare public appearance at the Santa Fe Literary Festival (he lives in Santa Fe, lest anyone get worried that he’s traveling the world and interrupting his writing schedule), A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin took the stage to talk with his friend and fellow author Douglas Preston. During the chat, he remembered how Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss originally sold Game of Thrones to HBO.
“I was out of television for a couple of years,” Martin said. “David Benioff and Dan Weiss, the showrunners, were the guys who took it to HBO to see if they’d buy or option them. Their pitch was: ‘The Sopranos in Middle Earth’. You have to be able to say it in a sentence.”
Martin is talking about the long-running Hollywood tradition of having to sell movie and TV show ideas by “compar[ing] things to previous things that have been successful.” You ever wonder why we’re so awash in sequels and remakes? It’s cause the people who okay new movies and shows only want things that have a track record of success, so if you’re pitching something completely new, you better at least put it in terms of something that already works.
As for Game of Thrones, “The Sopranos in Middle-earth” is a pretty accurate pitch. And hey, it got the show on the air, so nice going.
George R.R. Martin is “still working on the bloody novels”
Martin also gave the barest of updates on the remaining novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series: The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. He’s been writing Winds for over a decade now, with apparently no end in sight. “Game of Thrones was first sold by David Benioff and Dan Weiss, while I was still writing books, as I seem to be doing for the rest of my life,” he quipped.
"On August 21, House of the Dragon, the sequel to Game of Thrones, will hit the airwaves on HBO. Meanwhile, I’m still working on the bloody novels!"
We know, George. We know.
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h/t The Independent