George R.R. Martin told House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal some secrets about The Winds of Winter, the long-awaited sixth entry in his fantasy series.Speaking at the Game of Thrones Official Fan Convention, Condal stated he's thrilled to work with Martin because he's such a huge fan of A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series on which Game of Thrones is based. He added that he's just as excited for The Winds of Winter as everyone else, and revealed the author has actually let in him on a few secrets. "He's told me things that have, not a direct connection [to House of the Dragon], but when he's explaining mythologies and things like that, he'll just casually mention things," Condal said. "It's so cool but it's like, 'Ah! I just want to read the book.' So I'm very much looking forward to that as a fan, and I'm a fan of his too. I'm really rooting for him and I want him to get, as he calls it, the monkey off his back."
Fans of both the books and HBO's ever-evolving Game of Thrones universe have been waiting for Martin to release The Winds of Winter for over a decade, as the last book in the series, A Dance with Dragons, came out in 2011. Since its release, Game of Thrones concluded its run on HBO, House of the Dragon aired its first season, and the network has also begun planning several spinoff shows.
The Winds of Winter Enters the Final Stretch
Recently, Martin revealed that he is 500 pages away from being done with The Winds of Winter. Martin appeared on the comedy news show Tooning Out the News, where he talked with fellow author James Patterson, who's had 22 books published under his name this year. Martin claimed he has written 1100 or 1200 pages of The Winds of Winter in the last eleven years, and said he is now in the final stretch. Patterson joked that Martin should split the novel into three parts, and that would cure his writer's block.
While Martin works on The Winds of Winter, Condal is busy planning House of the Dragon Season 2, which is based on Martin's novel Fire & Blood. The House of the Dragon showrunner has promised big things for Season 2, as he and his team have already done the hard work of building complex characters so that the tragic events in the looming war are earned. "We will get to the spectacle... But you have to understand these people’s complexities before they’re thrown into war," he said. "Series two will hit the rhythms people came to expect from the middle run of Game of Thrones, but it will have been earned, and viewers will feel the tragedies because we put the work in."
Beyond Season 2, Martin has claimed he believes House of the Dragon needs at least four seasons to properly adapt his story. The author is much more involved in House of the Dragon than he was in the later seasons of Game of Thrones, which had to go off-book because the final two novels in the A Song of Ice and Fire series have not been released. Speaking about House of the Dragon's future, Martin said, "As it is, I am thrilled that we still have 10 hours every season to tell our tales, it is going to take four full seasons of 10 episodes each to do justice to the Dance of the Dragons, from start to finish."
Season 1 of House of the Dragon is available to stream on HBO Max.
Source: Game Of Thrones Official Fan Convention, via EW