{"id":7469,"date":"2022-02-20T11:10:07","date_gmt":"2022-02-20T18:10:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/?p=7469"},"modified":"2022-02-19T18:10:33","modified_gmt":"2022-02-20T01:10:33","slug":"the-pens-behind-the-swords","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/2022\/02\/20\/the-pens-behind-the-swords\/","title":{"rendered":"The Pens Behind the Swords"},"content":{"rendered":"

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON has a great pair of showrunners in Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik.<\/p>\n

And it has an amazing cast as well.\u00a0\u00a0 You’ve been reading about them for months.\u00a0 Matt Smith, Emma d’Arcy, Milly Alcock, Olivia Cooke, Paddy Considine, Emily Carey, Rhys Ifans, Steve Touissant, Fabien Frankel, and more, and more.\u00a0\u00a0 You may not know their names now, but I think you will before the year ends.\u00a0 You will hate some of them, love some of them, mourn for some of them.<\/p>\n

There’s another group of contributors, equally important, whose names you may not know either.\u00a0\u00a0 But you should.\u00a0 Without them , there would be no show.\u00a0\u00a0 If there was, it would certainly not be as good as I think HOUSE is going to be.\u00a0\u00a0 Here are the folks I am talking about:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Yes… it’s the writers.\u00a0\u00a0 <\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON is based on my novellas “The Princess and the Queen” and “The Rogue Prince,” and other materials from my Targaryen history FIRE & BLOOD… but FIRE & BLOOD is an imaginary history, not a traditional novel.\u00a0\u00a0 To turn it into a television series requires a lot more work than adapting a novel or short story.\u00a0\u00a0 The scriptwriters need to make history come alive.<\/p>\n

Ryan Condal assembled a pretty amazing team to do just that.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The photograph above was taken during one of my visits to LA — the last, I think, before Covid descended on us all, and shut down my travels — when I sat down with Ryan and his writers for dinner.\u00a0 It was a big loud lively dinner at a long table, but the food was great and the company was greater.\u00a0\u00a0 I loved talking dragons with the team, and I was impressed with the depth of their knowledge of my world, and their enthusiasm for the project.<\/p>\n

The first season of HOUSE is now wrapped, and in large part thanks to the talents of our scribes.\u00a0 So please raise your glasses and toast our writers:\u00a0 Sara Hess, Gabe Fonseca, Ira Parker, Ti Mikkel, Charmaine DeGrate, Kevin Lau, and Eileen Shim.\u00a0\u00a0 And of course Ryan Condal himself, the ringmaster and dragon tamer.\u00a0\u00a0 Oh, and though they are not in the picture, I should also salute Claire Kiechel and Wes Tooke, who joined Ryan and Ti in the mini writer’s room that preceded this one, before there was even a pick up.<\/p>\n

(And me, you ask?\u00a0 No, I did not write a script for the first season of HOUSE… part of me would have loved to, but I have been kind of busy with WINDS OF WINTER, the other THRONES successor shows, various WILD CARDS books, the WILD CARDS tv pilot for Peacock and UCP, DARK WINDS for AMC, ROADMARKS for HBO, NIGHT OF THE COOTERS and a couple other really cool Howard Waldrop projects, and… well, yeah, okay, I bought a railroad, never mind.\u00a0\u00a0 I did<\/em><\/strong> co-create the series with Ryan and help give it its shape, and he and I have been in constant contact ever since).<\/p>\n

Hollywood is a land of change, and writers are always moving around in today’s television landscape.\u00a0\u00a0 Some of the folks in the photo above moved on to other shows and other networks before season one of HOUSE even began to film.\u00a0\u00a0 Others have been with us all the way through the first season, and will be returning for season two (if indeed HBO gives us a season two, cross your fingers).\u00a0\u00a0 But all of them played a part.<\/p>\n

So here’s to the writers!\u00a0\u00a0 Huzzah!<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

HOUSE OF THE DRAGON has a great pair of showrunners in Ryan Condal and Miguel Sapochnik. And it has an amazing cast as well.\u00a0\u00a0 You’ve been reading about them for months.\u00a0 Matt Smith, Emma d’Arcy, Milly Alcock, Olivia Cooke, Paddy Considine, Emily Carey, Rhys Ifans, Steve Touissant, Fabien Frankel, and more, and more.\u00a0\u00a0 You may […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[218],"tags":[15,300,11],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7469"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7469"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7469\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7477,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7469\/revisions\/7477"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7469"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7469"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/georgerrmartin.com\/notablog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7469"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}