A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin has said he's written 1,100 pages of next book The Winds of Winter, the same amount he'd written as of December 2022, while also revealing there are eight other Game of Thrones spin-off shows in addition to House of the Dragon.
Speaking to Bangcast, Martin didn't give Game of Thrones fans looking forward to The Winds of Winter much hope, as the so-far nine years late novel hasn't seen much progress since last year, at least in terms of page count.
"The main thing I'm actually writing, of course, is the same thing... I wish I could write as fast as [The Last Kingdom author Bernard Cornwell] but I'm 12 years late on this damn novel and I'm struggling with it," Martin said.
"I have like 1,100 pages written but I still have hundreds more pages to go. It's a big mother of a book for whatever reason. Maybe I should've started writing smaller books when I began this but it's tough. That's the main thing that dominates most of my working life."
Martin said on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert in December 2022 he had "like 1,100, 1,200 pages" done, with 400 or 500 to go before The Winds of Winter was complete. Almost a year on, the author seemingly still has the same amount of work to be done.
No writer is blessed with producing a perfect first draft, of course, and Martin's "writing" of The Winds of Winter will also encompass re-reading, re-writing, editing, planning, and so on, so there's still plenty of work to be done without actually increasing the page number total.
Martin said in October 2022 the book was around three quarters of the way done, noting he's completely finished some characters' stories but still has others to weave throughout them. The overall progress of The Winds of Winter has become somewhat of an ongoing gag within the fiction community though, with even Martin himself getting in on the joke.
An estimated release window for The Winds of Winter was first given in 2011 when the previous book, A Dance With Dragons, was released, and Martin said it would take three years to finish at a good pace. That set expectations for a 2014 release date, but year after year, and delay after delay, Martin still isn't ready to release the penultimate A Song of Ice and Fire entry.
While he claims the bulk of his working life is spent on The Winds of Winter, Martin does also work with HBO to adapt further Game of Thrones spin-offs for the silver screen. House of the Dragon was the first to release, with a second season now in development, while another series called Tales of Dunk and Egg has been greenlit.
While chatter has surrounded various spin-offs over the years, Martin told Bangcast that a whopping eight other Game of Thrones shows were being developed, one of which is Tales of Dunk and Egg. This doesn't mean they're greenlit and therefore definitely releasing, but HBO and Martin are workshopping them and figuring out the logistics with that goal in mind.
"In televison we have the new show, House of the Dragon, which has just finished filming its second season, and we're going to be planning for the third season soon," Martin said.
"But I also have like eight other spin-off shows that we're developing. The Dunk and Egg show has been greenlit. The others, not yet, but we're still working on them."
House of the Dragon tells the history of Game of Thrones' Targaryen family (from which Daenerys comes) and Season 1 spans around 20 years of that history alone. Dunk and Egg is more focused, telling the story of a knight named Ser Duncan the Tall and his squire, also of Daenerys' lineage, Aegon V Targaryen.
Other spin-offs that have surfaced include 10,000 Ships, which is set 1,000 years before Game of Thrones; Snow, which follows Kit Harrington's Jon Snow after the events of the main show; The Sea Snake, which is about House Velaryon and it's head Lord Corlys; and more.
Other series have risen and fallen over the years too, including one cancelled project based on The Long Night and Age of Heroes that HBO spent $30 million on.
Ryan Dinsdale is an IGN freelance reporter. He'll talk about The Witcher all day.
source https://www.ign.com/articles/george-rr-martin-has-written-1100-pages-of-the-winds-of-winter-the-same-number-as-last-year