George R.R. Martin Says Game Of Thrones Book Ending Will Now Be "Significantly Different" From The TV Show

George R.R. Martin has officially changed his tune regarding the ending of his novel series. He now claims it will be “significantly different” from HBO’s Game of Thrones series.

In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Martin said, “[The book’s ending is] going to be significantly different.”

“Some characters who are alive in my book are going to be dead in the show, and vice versa,” he added.

Now, obviously characters being dead in the show that are still alive in the books is already the case, but this is significantly different from what Martin was saying before the show ended and even immediately after it ended back in 2019.

Nevertheless, he shared some specifics about what he is now planning for his ending, “I was going to kill more people. Not the ones they killed [in the show]. They made it more of a happy ending. I don’t see a happy ending for Tyrion. His whole arc has been tragic from the first. I was going to have Sansa die, but she’s been so appealing in the show, maybe I’ll let her live …”

Back in 2014, showrunner David Benoiff told Vanity Fair, “Last year we went out to Santa Fe for a week to sit down with him and just talk through where things are going. Because we don't know if we are going to catch up and where exactly that would be. If you know the ending, then you can lay the groundwork for it. And so we want to know how everything ends. We want to be able to set things up. So we just sat down with him and literally went through every character."

Martin even shared, “I can give them the broad strokes of what I intend to write, but the details aren't there yet. I'm hopeful that I can not let them catch up with me.”

Nevertheless, Martin did acknowledge there would be minor discrepancies, “Ultimately, it'll be different. You have to recognize that there are going to be some differences. I'm very pleased with how faithful the show is to the books, but it's never gonna be exactly the same. You can't include all the characters. You're not going to include their real lines of dialogue or subplot, and hopefully each will stand on its own.”

In March 2015, Benioff and his co-showrunner D.B. Weiss did a Q&A at Oxford Union with Benioff declaring the show would “meet up at pretty much the same place where George is going."

“There might be a few deviations along the route, but we’re heading towards the same destination,” he said.

In an interview he conducted with Anderson Cooper for 60 Minutes back in April 2019, he said all the main story beats were the same. Cooper asked, “When it was clear they were catching up, you told them a kind of an overarching future of where you saw the last two books going in terms of plot?”

Martin replied, “Yes. And, you know, the major beats. I mean, obviously, we're talking here about several days of story conferences taking place in my home in Santa Fe, New Mexico. But there's no way to get in all the detail, all the minor characters, all the secondary characters.”

“The series has been extremely faithful, compared to 97 percent of all television and movie adaptations of literary properties,” he added. “But it's not completely faithful. And it can't be. Otherwise, it would have to run another five seasons.”

On his blog a month later, he also said, “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.”

“I am working in a very different medium than David and Dan, never forget. They had six hours for this final season. I expect these last two books of mine will fill 3000 manuscript pages between them before I’m done… and if more pages and chapters and scenes are needed, I’ll add them,” he explained. “And of course the butterfly effect will be at work as well; those of you who follow this Not A Blog will know that I’ve been talking about that since season one. There are characters who never made it onto the screen at all, and others who died in the show but still live in the books… so if nothing else, the readers will learn what happened to Jeyne Poole, Lady Stoneheart, Penny and her pig, Skahaz Shavepate, Arianne Martell, Darkstar, Victarion Greyjoy, Ser Garlan the Gallant, Aegon VI, and a myriad of other characters both great and small that viewers of the show never had the chance to meet. And yes, there will be unicorns… of a sort…”

By 2020, he began distancing himself from the show. He told German website Welt, “People know one ending — not the ending

He also told PBS, “Now, the show was ahead of me and going in a somewhat different direction. So I’m still working on the book, but you’ll see my ending when that comes out.”

While Martin had began distancing himself from the show, actor Isaac Hempstead Wright, who played Bran, revealed that his character becoming King also happened in the unfinished novels, “David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] told me there were two things George R.R. Martin had planned for Bran, and that was the Hodor revelation, and that he would be king. So that's pretty special to be directly involved in something that is part of George's vision. It was a really nice way to wrap it up."

Interestingly enough, Martin also shared how much he has rewritten Winds of Winter already. He told The Hollywood Reporter, “I will open the last chapter I was working on and I’ll say, ‘Oh [expletive], this is not very good.’ And I’ll go in and I’ll rewrite it. Or I’ll decide, ‘This Tyrion chapter is not coming along, let me write a Jon Snow chapter.’ If I’m not interrupted though, what happens — at least in the past — is sooner or later, I do get into it.”

Speaking to a chapter on Tyrion, he shared, “I wrote a Tyrion chapter I just loved. Then I looked at it and said: ‘I can’t do this, it will change the whole book. I’ll make this into a series of dreams. No! That doesn’t work either …”

As for when he might finish The Winds of Winter, Martin was noncommittal, “I do think if I can just get some of these other things off my back, I could finish The Winds of Winter pretty soon. It’s been made clear to me that Winds is the priority, but … I don’t know. Sometimes I’m not in the mood for that.”

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