‘Game of Thrones’ author George R. R. Martin slams TV and film adaptations, ‘They never make it better’

However, Martin did acknowledge that sometimes an adaptation turns out to be good. He mentioned the latest series, ‘Shogun’ starring Hiroyuki Sanada. (Image via X)

George R. R. Martin, a revered author, recently took to his own blog page to voice his opinion regarding TV and film adaptations in Hollywood.

“Very little has changed since then. 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 Stan Lee, Charles Dickens, Ian Fleming, Roald Dahl, Ursula K. Le Guin, J.R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Raymond Chandler, Jane Austen, or… well, anyone,” Martin wrote on his blog.

“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,” Martin added. “‘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,” he continued.

However, Martin did acknowledge that sometimes an adaptation turns out to be good. He mentioned the latest series, ‘Shogun’ starring Hiroyuki Sanada.

He added, “Once in a while we do get a really good adaptation of a really good book, and when that happens, it deserves applause.”

“I was dubious when I first heard they were making another version of the Clavell novel. It has been a long time, a long long LONG time, but I read the book when it first came out in the late 70s and was mightily impressed. I am glad they did, though. The new ‘Shogun’ is superb… I think the author would have been pleased.  Both old and new screenwriters did honor to the source material, and gave us terrific adaptations, resisting the impulse to ‘make it their own,’” he concluded.

The author first spoke about his gripe with adaptations in 2022 with Neil Gaiman.

“How faithful do you have to be? Some people don’t feel that they have to be faithful at all. There’s this phrase that goes around: ‘I’m going to make it my own.’ I hate that phrase. And I think Neil probably hates that phrase, too,” he said.

“I do,” Gaiman responded. “I spent 30 years watching people make ‘Sandman’ their own. And some of those people hadn’t even read ‘Sandman’ to make it their own, they’d just flipped through a few comics or something.”