Usually, when the words “disappointed,” “Robert,” and “Kirkman” appear in the same sentence, it’s pertaining to unfortunate decisions made by the creative team behind AMC’s The Walking Dead. This time, though, it’s because Kirkman — who serves as executive producer for the zombie apocalypse show and writes the less-frustrating comic book upon which it’s based — expressed his annoyance that a fellow writer allowed the narrative of his book series to be overtaken by its television adaptation.
During a recent interview with Rolling Stone, the 37-year-old revealed that he knows how, if not when, the comic series The Walking Dead will end. When asked if he would ever consider giving that information to showrunner Scott M. Gimple so that he and his team could start bending the TV series toward a similar end point, Kirkman shut that idea down fast:
“I would never do that,” Kirkman assured the interviewer. “That’s the one thing I’m disappointed in George R.R. Martin for doing. He should have just been like, ‘Fuck you. You make it up now, I’ll get to mine when I’m ready.’”
Kirkman is referring to the way that HBO’s Game Of Thrones has moved beyond the narrative point of Martin’s A Song Of Ice And Fire books and is currently in the process of revealing mysteries (“Hodor!”) embedded into the story since its first book was published 20 years ago this August. Though the Santa Fe-based fantasy novelist is a notoriously slow writer, he supposedly did not foresee the show—which moves at a rate of about one book a season—catching up with him, so he happily handed over all of his good secrets to show creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. When the fifth book in his series, A Dance With Dragons, was published in July 2011 (six years after the previous one, A Feast For Crows), only the first season of the TV show had aired, and it seemed to most people unfamiliar with math that he would have plenty of time to finish up his planned seven-book series before the show wrapped up. Fast-forward to 2016, when HBO has lapped Martin and fans are still hungrily waiting for book six, The Winds Of Winter, to hit shelves.
But while Kirkman’s criticisms of Martin letting other people spoil his story are understandable, they’re also somewhat ironic, considering the great lengths to which his own show goes to ruin big moments.
[via Movie Pilot]