George RR Martin talks about ‘bad’ relationship with ‘House of the Dragon’ showrunner Ryan Condal

Forget Team Black versus Team Blue. When it comes The House of the Beastthe biggest conflict seems to be Team George RR Martin against Team Ryan Condal.

In a The Hollywood Reporter interview, i A Song of Ice and Fire the writer He revealed that his relationship with The House of the Beast the show is “uglier than stone. It’s ugly.”

These build together Game of Thrones prequel together, ​​​​​​but during Season 2, cracks in their relationship began to appear. In an August 30, 2024 post on his blog Not A Blog, Martin wrote, “I’m not looking forward to another post I need to write, about everything that went wrong with HOUSE OF THE DRAGON.”

That post came a few days later, on September 4. In a now-deleted post titled, “Beware the Butterflies,” Martin argued that, by removing Helaena (Phia Saban) and Aegon II Targaryen’s (Tom Glynn-Carney) newborn Maelor from the infamous show Blood and Cheese, The House of the Beast released the butterfly effect that would have negatively affected its familiarity with plot points throughout Martin’s Targaryen history Fire and Blood.

In accordance with The Hollywood Reporter“Beware of the Butterflies” was intended to be the first of six that Martin would write about The House of the Beast. However, the other five never saw the light of day.

The post was the culmination of what appeared to be a troubled creative relationship.

“I thought Ryan and I were partners,” Martin said The Hollywood Reporter. “And we were all in the middle of the first season. I was reading the first drafts. I was giving notes. He would change some things. It was working very well – I thought.”

Then came Season 2.

“He actually stopped listening to me,” said Martin. “I would write notes, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he would explain why he didn’t do it. Sometimes, he would say, ‘Oh, OK, yeah, I’ll think about that.’ It got worse, and I became more and more angry. Eventually, it got to the point where I was told by HBO that I had to send all my notes to them and they would give Ryan our combined notes. “

Sources said The Hollywood Reporter that Martin and Condal’s disagreement escalated in a Zoom meeting with producers and HBO executives where Condal outlined his season plan. Afterwards, Martin allegedly told her, “This is not my business anymore.”

After the call, Martin reportedly backed out The House of the Beast at the request of HBO. However, after a few months, he returned to the show for his own reasons The Hollywood Reporter “he can’t talk.”

In a March 31, 2025 interview with Entertainment Weekly, Condal offered his side of Martin’s criticism of Season 2, citing practical needs for practice changes.

“I’ll just say, I made every effort to put George in the adaptation process. I really did. Over the years and years. And we really enjoyed a fruitful partnership, I thought, a really strong partnership for a long time,” Condal told EW. “But at some point, as we went deeper down the road, he became willing to acknowledge the real issues that exist in a meaningful way. And I think that as a producer of the show, I have to keep my active producer hat and my creative writer, materialist hat at the same time.

“At the end of the day, I just have to keep marching not only the writing process forward, but also the physical parts of the process forward for the sake of the crew, the cast, and HBO, because that’s my job. So I can only hope that George and I can find that harmony again one day.”

The House of the Beast Season 3 premieres this summer on HBO and HBO Max.