By Author George R.R. Martin, whose works have yielded HBO’s “Game of Thrones” franchise, has called out bad film and TV adaptations of books.
In a recent blog post, the author spoke about a panel he was on with Neil Gaiman back in 2022. At the time, the pair both spoke about faithfulness to the source material.
Martin expressed his hatred of the phrase “I’m going to make it my own”. Said phrase is often used by writers/producers who want to make major changes to the source material for their screen adaptation.
In his new posting, he now says:
“If anything, things have gotten worse. Everywhere you look, there are more screenwriters and producers eager to take great stories and ‘make them their own.’ It does not seem to matter whether the source material was written by.
No matter how major a writer it is, no matter how great the book, there always seems to be someone on hand who thinks he can do better, eager to take the story and ‘improve’ on it.
‘The book is the book, the film is the film,’ they will tell you, as if they were saying something profound. Then they make the story their own. They never make it better, though. Nine hundred ninety-nine times out of a thousand, they make it worse.”
Martin says that “once in a while we do get a really good adaptation of a really good book” and cited the recent FX series “Shogun” as one of those exceptions, dubbing that series “superb” and faithful to the James Clavell novel.
The post “Thrones” Author Hates Unfaithful Adaptations appeared first on Dark Horizons.
