George R.R. Martin has clarified comments he made about the so-called “rivalry” between Game of Thrones and The Lord of the Rings. This topic came up because the next Game of Thrones spinoff, House of the Dragon, arrives just days before Amazon’s new Lord of the Rings show, The Rings of Power.
In an interview with The Independent, Martin said he can relate to the feeling of competitiveness, but he hopes both shows will help elevate fantasy in general. That said, Martin obviously is biased toward Game of Thrones, so he hopes House of the Dragon wins more Emmys. Now, writing on his Not A Blog, Martin said he was annoyed by how his comments were misconstrued by some websites.
“Somehow three-quarters of the clickbait sites out there, ignoring the entire thrust of my comments, twisted my words on their head into headlines about how much I want to beat the Tolkien show,” he said. “Sigh.”
Martin said he has a competitive nature within him, but that feeling lives alongside his hopes and desires for as many fantasy shows to succeed at the same time to help elevate the genre.
“I expect I will be watching Rings of Power when it premieres. I want it to be great. I want it to run for many years, to win Emmys and Golden Globes,” he said. “And I want the same for House of the Dragon. Regardless of awards, I want both shows to find an appreciative audience, and give them great television. Great fantasy. The more fantasy hits we have, the more great fantasy we are likely to get.”
The same goes for sci-fi projects, Martin said. But for more fantasy and sci-fi projects to get the green light, existing and upcoming ones like House of the Dragon and The Rings of Power need to be hits to demonstrate there is an audience for them, Martin said.
Martin has said Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series is “kind of a weird deal” because Amazon bought the rights to the appendices but not the more popular (so far, at least) works of JRR Tolkien.
“It’s kind of a weird deal, as you know. Amazon bought Tolkien, but they didn’t actually get any of the books,” Martin said. “They didn’t get Lord of the Rings, they didn’t get The Hobbit, they didn’t even get The Silmarillion. I don’t think they got Farmer Giles of Ham or Leaf by Niggle, but they got the appendices, I guess, and they’re constructing a Second Age story about that. There’s a lot of myth about that, so it’ll be interesting to see what they did.”
House of the Dragon premieres August 21 on HBO, while Amazon’s Rings of Power debuts just 12 days later on September 2 via Prime Video. Meanwhile, Martin is still writing the next book, The Winds of Winter, and he recently gave an update in which he admitted it’s “late.”
Source: Gamespot
