George Martin Tried to Save Game of Thrones Finale but No One Listened to His Pleas

The celebrated author realized just how wrong the adaptation was going to go pretty early — but no one listened to his pleas when he tried to save Game of Thrones.

George Martin has been building the world of Ice and Fire for decades, and HBO’s TV adaptation allowed the whole world to marvel upon his creation. Unfortunately, as you know, the TV show went off the rails at one point — and according to the latest information, GRRM was actively trying to steer it back in the right direction.

That… Didn’t work out. Here’s how the events unfolded.

George Martin Started Worrying in Season 5

While the distinct lack of new ASoIaF books tells us that GRRM doesn’t necessarily know what happens next in his series, he has always known what doesn’t happen. The celebrated author saw the first signs of Game of Thrones’ downfall as early as Season 5: that’s when he noticed Benioff and Weiss’ creative… Differences with him.

“George loves Dan [Weiss] and Dave [Benioff], but after Season 5, he did start to worry about the path they were going — because George knows where the story goes. He started saying, ‘You’re not following my template,’” the author’s agent Paul Haas revealed for James Andrew Miller’s new book Tinderbox.

The showrunners didn’t listen to him, and George Martin might have given up… Until he learned that Benioff and Weiss wanted to cut the show short. That shook him.

George Martin ‘Begged’ to Keep GoT Going

By the time Benioff and Weiss felt sick and tired of working on Game of Thrones, the TV show had already gone completely off the rails. George Martin, however, still saw the way to fix it and give it a proper finale; HBO was on his side, but the showrunners cared little for dragging it out any longer. They wanted to be off the GoT hook ASAP.

“George would fly to New York to have lunch with [HBO CEO] Plepler, to beg him to do ten seasons of ten episodes because there was enough material for it and to tell him it would be a more satisfying and more entertaining experience. [But Dan and Dave] wanted to move on, so they cut it short,” Haas explained further.

Unfortunately, there was no way to make the showrunners keep the iconic TV show going. We all know what happened next: an anticlimactic finale, a massive fan backlash, a petition to remake the Game of Thrones ending…

But at least, George Martin did everything he could to try and prevent that.