House of the Dragon: George R. R. Martin Has More “Creative Influence” Than He Did on Game of Thrones

The second episode of House of the Dragon is being released tonight. The show’s first episode broke HBO viewing records last week, and it’s already been renewed for a second season. The show draws inspiration from George R.R. Martin‘s novella Fire & Blood, and follows the rise of the Targaryen family, and takes place about 200 years before Game of Thrones. Recently, Martin was a guest on The History of Westeros podcast (via PopCulture) and revealed he has more “influence” on the prequel series, but still no “control.”

“Hollywood will give you money a lot easier than they’ll give you creative control,” Martin said with a laugh. “You can go to negotiations and say ‘Yes, I will thank you for paying me 8 million dollars, but I would like creative control as well.’ And they will say, ‘How about 10 million?’ They would rather give millions of dollars than any creative control.”

“What I do have is influence, I have creative influence,” Martin added, “but that depends largely on the relationship between myself and the showrunners and so forth. I mean, I can make points, I can argue and they can listen, but if they decide not to listen, then you know, I can persuade them. I don’t have the power to hire or to fire. I don’t have the power to dictate things, but what I have, if they listen to me and I can be fairly persuasive and I know this material pretty well, so, there’s that something and it’s always changing.”

Martin continued, “You know, I had a lot of input in the beginning of Game of Thrones, partly cause I had these books out there. But at a certain point, as the show went on I found I had less and less influence until by the end, I really didn’t even know what was going on. Some of these things I watched like everybody else, and ‘oh, okay.’” He explained, “Now at the moment, I’m very happy with House of the Dragon. It’s a very faithful adaptation. Yeah, there’s some changes, but I have a great relationship with Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik.”  

You can read HBO’s official synopsis for House of the Dragon here: “The prequel series finds the Targaryen dynasty at the absolute apex of its power, with more than 15 dragons under their yoke. Most empires-real and imagined-crumble from such heights. In the case of the Targaryens, their slow fall begins almost 193 years before the events of Game of Thrones, when King Viserys Targaryen breaks with a century of tradition by naming his daughter Rhaenyra heir to the Iron Throne. But when Viserys later fathers a son, the court is shocked when Rhaenyra retains her status as his heir, and seeds of division sow friction across the realm.”

House of the Dragon‘s second episode will be available to watch on HBO tonight.