George R.R. Martin Criticizes Screen Adaptations of Books: 'They Never Make It Better'

George R.R. Martin has some reservations about how some screenwriters adapt books for the screen.

The author, 74, shared his opinion on the topic in a May 24 post to his personal blog — and shares that he is particularly hesitant when screenwriters take their own liberties with their source material.

“Very little has changed since then,” Martin wrote, referencing a 2022 conversation at New York City’s Symphony Space during which he addressed the issue with author Neil Gaiman.

“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,'" the author continued. "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.”

“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 continued. "‘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.”

Martin’s epic fantasy novel series, A Song of Ice and Fire, was adapted into the Emmy Award-winning HBO series Game of Thrones. While speaking with Gaiman in 2022, the authors discussed screenwriters’ responsibilities to their source material. A number of Gaiman’s works, including his 2002 children’s novella Coraline and his 1990 novel Good Omens, cowritten with Terry Pratchett, have been adapted for the screen.

“How faithful do you have to be?” Martin asked during the discussion. “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.”

On his blog, however, the author did acknowledge that there is occasionally a “really good adaptation of a really good book.” Martin cited the FX series Shōgun as an example, which is based upon the 1975 novel by James Clavell.

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“I am glad they did [adapt the book], though,” Martin wrote. “The new ‘Shōgun’ 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.'”