George R.R. Martin thinks screenwriters should stick a little closer to their source material

George R.R. Martin is sure spending a lot of time writing on his blog and not actually finishing Winds Of Winter, huh? His latest dispatch concerns screenwriters adapting original source material, something he knows a bit about. Spoiler alert: he doesn’t think they usually do it very well.

“A few years back, Neil Gaiman and I did a joint event in New York City, when we were both in town,” he opened, referencing a 2022 Q&A in which the authors expressed their frustration with the screenwriters using the phrase “I’m going to make it my own,” something both men said they hated. “How faithful do you have to be? Some people don’t feel that they have to be faithful at all,” Martin said at the time (via Variety).

“That was all back in 2022, but very little has changed since then,” the author continued in this week’s post. “If anything, things have gotten worse.” He goes on to explain that “everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own,’” and that no matter who the original author is, “there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it.”

“They never make it better, though,” he continued. “Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”

Martin has generally been gracious toward David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the creators of his own novel’s adaptation, but did imply that his written ending would be different from the show’s in a blog post from 2019. Well, we think he means it will be different… it’s pretty cryptic: “How will it all end? I hear people asking. The same ending as the show? Different? Well… yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes. And no. And yes.” Sure!

He also promised that fans would hear in ink about the many characters that never made it onto the screen—Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Arianne Martell, and co.—which made up perhaps the biggest difference between his original series and Game Of Thrones. That is if he ever finishes, of course, but if he does, he assures that “everyone can make up their own mind, and argue about it on the internet.”

As for right now, he does have one example of “a really good adaptation of a really good book… [that] deserves applause.” It’s FX’s Shōgun, which he called “superb.” The A.V. Club tends to agree. You can read all of our reviews of the show—which recently announced it would be returning for a second season, beyond what author James Clavell wrote in his original 1975 novel—here.