As if the show didn’t break your heart enough.
George R. R. Martin revealed to Showbiz411 at the Writers Guild West Awards that characters would soon die in Season 5 of HBO’s Game of Thrones that are still alive in A Song of Ice and Fire, the book series the show is based on.
“People are going to die who don’t die in the books, so even the book readers will be unhappy. So everybody better be on their toes. [The creators of the show] are even bloodier than I am.”
That’s somehow hard to imagine given the perpetual rate at which George has written the deaths of loved and even main characters in his book which have become some of the more popular episodes of the show such as The Red Wedding in Season 3’s The Rains of Castamere or the duel in Season 4’s The Mountain and The Viper.
News of impending (but not surprising) deaths in the show are coupled with the dilemma of Games of Thrones quickly catching up to the number of books George R. R. Martin has written; the series is a total of seven books but he has only written five. The show will begin it’s 5th season that contains events from his fourth and fifth books (which occur concurrently) and could possibly catch up to his writings this season.
Martin himself was not certain as to how many seasons of the show there would be but ensured he would have enough written material:
“This is the fifth season, the sixth season HBO picked up last year. We will have a 7th, 8th or 9th, no one knows. They only renew one or two seasons at a time. After we do season 6, maybe we’ll get a renewal for 7th and 8th. That all depends, Television is a very changeable medium.”
“…I certainly hope that we get to tell the entire story. Because whatever happens with the show I’m going to finish the books, it will be seven books. But each of these books are 1500 pages long and they each have enough material in them for several seasons. I have two more books, the one I’m writing right now, ‘The Winds Of Winter,’ and after that the last book, ‘The Dream of Spring,’ so those will be the two final books. But we’re talking 3000 pages of material. How many seasons that translates too? That’s up to [the creators] D.B. And David.”
George R. R. Martin’s next book, The Winds of Winter, will be published “reasonably soon” according to his editor Anne Groell.
Season 5 of HBO’s Game of Thrones premieres on Sunday April 15, 2015. You can watch the trailer here.
