HBO Suspends Overall Deal with George R.R. Martin!!

As you may know, you can’t go on a strike without making some sacrifices. As the WGA and SAG-AFTRA joined hands in a history-making nationwide strike, author and screenwriter George R.R. Martin wrote a blog post to reveal that he’s already collecting losses from joining the strike. He commented on Season 2 of House of the Dragon — which is still filming despite the strikes — but his involvement with HBO productions has severely decreased in the last month.

Martin uses his blog to provide regular updates on anything related to Game of Thrones and the world of Westeros. In the latest entry, the writer revealed that the overall deal that he had signed with HBO “was suspended on June 1,” which suggests it was a reflection of the first month of the writers’ strike. However, the screenwriter stresses that he’s not the one that people should be worried about:

“I still have plenty to do, of course. In that, I am one of the lucky ones. These strikes are not really about name writers or producers or showrunners, most of whom are fine; we’re striking for the entry level writers, the story editors, the students hoping to break in, the actor who has four lines, the guy working his first staff job who dreams of creating his own show one day, as I did back in the 80s.”

George R.R. Martin Has Been Fully Supportive of the Strike

In another recent and extensive blog post, Martin broke down how the TV industry has been cruel to new writers and wrote about how it’s been preventing new and competent showrunners from rising up, and it’s keeping writers from having a steady income – not to mention the disregard that most of them get when it comes to their own creations. Martin slammed the mini-rooms and told his own story of how he evolved from an entry-level writer to a massive head writer and producer across his career.

Martin’s overall deal was signed in 2021, which originally put him in business with HBO and Max for at least five years. This means that Warner/Discovery had no problem in letting go of the remaining three years of the contract even though it had already resulted in a slate of Game of Thrones spin-offs getting developed. The author celebrated the fact that, amidst all of this, he can still work on the stage play The Iron Throne, and teases that a West End premiere is not far. Martin capped the post off by stating he’s been editing a couple of new Wild Cards books and working on the highly anticipated novel The Winds of Winter “almost every day,” but there’s still no publish date in sight.