Why George R.R. Martin Broke the Cardinal Rule of Hollywood (2024)

https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-features/george-r-r-martin-howard-waldrop-ugly-chickens-game-of-thrones-1236078329/

by throwoutway • 10 months ago

13 13 10 months ago

hollywoodreporter.com

valiant55• 10 months ago

The cardinal rule of Hollywood is: Never use your own money

Since it wasn't explained in the opener.

cafard• 10 months ago

Thanks.

ghssds• 10 months ago

I don't understand. Someone gotta put their hand in their pocket and break the rule or nothing would ever happen.

Jtsummers• 10 months ago

It's like many startups: spend other people's money by finding investors.

It's a bit of a semantic game, but investing != spending. Paying someone's salary is not an investment in that you don't get money back from that person, you get something of value hopefully, but not a monetary return from them. Investing in a movie or a startup has an expectation of a monetary return, so the investment is not "spent" (relevant synonyms: exhausted, consumed, depleted) by the investor.

Then whoever is actually making the movie, versus investing in it, is the one spending money. But it's not their money, it's the producers' money.

add-sub-mul-div• 10 months ago

That's the problem with people needlessly going out of their way to post the tl;dr which encourages people not to read the actual source with nuance and context. Of course we won't understand.

poisonborz• 10 months ago

He wrote Thrones explicitly to challenge Hollywood clichés and inject real medieval mechanics in an otherwise throbbing overblown drama. He made a bank, got a following, sold the rights, and it's not his fault that after the source material ran out, it turned to be exactly what he hated. But he's rich, lives for his hobbies. I don't think he owes anyone anything.

AtlasBarfed• 10 months ago

So OUTSOURCE it. There are probably a thousand very talented writers that would collaborate on writing the books, coming up with plot, tracking canon, and GRR can just cruise in and edit/supervise.

Hell, you can probably train an AI to check the canon.

If he just likes being famous and making money, do that. He'll be more famous and more rich, and the people get books to read.

It's going to happen when he dies, so if he wants some say in what happens, he should do it now. Otherwise it will get Disney Star Wars'd.

And you know what? GoT will NEVER be remade the way it is. I guess he doesn't have any children, so he doesn't care.

IAmBroom• 10 months ago

He can't, because he's emotionally invested 100% in pride of his writing. I'm not saying he doesn't deserve to be proud, but it's pride that keeps him from farming out the writing while keeping absolute-dictator control of the approved product.

Seth McFarlane won't make another season of The Orville for the same reason: he has to write each episode.

The Conchords TV series ended because it was too much work to write new songs for each episode.

Each is reasonable, yet unreasonable.

gdulli• 10 months ago

He's the one who gave HBO permission to do so, so I do consider him ultimately responsible.

marklubi• 10 months ago

He wrote Thrones explicitly to challenge Hollywood clichés

Hard disagreement on that one.

He wrote an epic story known as A Song of Ice and Fire (started in '96) that ended up getting out of hand and tied up with too many Goordian knots to complete. Sadly, we'll probably never get a conclusion to it.

Along the line, a producer came along who thought they could make money with it. First few seasons weren't terrible, but were too short to capture it all. The rest were completely rushed and unable to take on all that was going on. They went off the rails after a few seasons.

I will agree that he doesn't owe anyone anything though. My philosophy is that I create for me, if others also enjoy that, excellent.

Edit: I'm still a little bitter after going to a trivia night and losing a question because I gave the canon answer that was different from the show

sorokod• 10 months ago

Apocalypse Now was financed by Coppola.

dole• 10 months ago

Coppola secured a lot of funding for Apocalypse from United Artists. Megalopolis still follows the rule.

lapcat• 10 months ago

(2024)

Why George R.R. Martin Broke the Cardinal Rule of Hollywood (2024)

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