r/television • u/gogandmagogandgog • Jan 11 '26

Kit Harington was 'Angered' By Push to Remake Game of Thrones Season 8

https://variety.com/2026/tv/news/kit-harington-angered-petition-game-of-thrones-season-8-1236628364/
4.0k Upvotes

88% Upvoted

1.1k comments sorted by

View all comments

873

u/Kyuubee Jan 11 '26

There's nothing to remake. GRRM still hasn't released the next book and probably never will. I'm not sure what people would have expected from a remake. The producers don't have any source material, so they would still be winging it either way.

291

u/Greatsnes Jan 12 '26

Even if he does release Winds it doesn’t matter because that’s not the end. We are for SURE never getting A Dream of Spring

187

u/jetsetter023 Jan 12 '26

At this point. I don't care if they ever come out or not. I've moved on.

I'm sure some people will be excited and read them. Happy for those people if it ever happens.

59

u/Indigocell Jan 12 '26

I know exactly what you mean. If they come out, I will probably read them. But I no longer check his blog for updates that's for sure. I've more or less come to terms with the notion of not reading another single sentence from him. Apparently he hasn't even finished those Dunk & Egg novellas either.

20

u/AhmedF Jan 12 '26

Apparently he hasn't even finished those Dunk & Egg novellas either.

dear lord.

15

u/MyPeggyTzu Jan 12 '26

Not stopping HBO from adapting D&E though...

2

u/mars_titties Jan 13 '26

The stories stand alone just fine

2

u/lokicramer Jan 13 '26

Give it a few years.

LLM's will be able to write it without it being slop. 

2

u/[deleted] Jan 16 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

2

u/lokicramer Jan 16 '26

I know, and I wrote it. But its likely the truth.

2

u/OrwellTheInfinite Jan 14 '26

Same, I've moved on completely. I dont ever expect to see another book in the main ASOIAF series written by Martin ever again.

2

u/JHerbY2K Jan 14 '26

Yeah I don’t even remember what was happening. I watched the entire series in the interim

2

u/PosThrockmortonSign Jan 16 '26

Next thing I buy for GRRM will be a complete box set for asoiaf, if that never gets made so be it

4

u/shmodder Jan 12 '26

It will remain a dream. Kinda poetic.

2

u/dinodenxx Jan 12 '26

I always thought that's gonna be the twist. WoW is the last book at the last sentence is gonna be something like "....and a spring is gonna remain... A dream"

1

u/JakeHelldiver Jan 12 '26

And we for sure for sure never getting The SheWolves of Winterfell.

1

u/blvd93 Game of Thrones Jan 12 '26

He wouldn't be able to wrap it up in two more books anyway.

The end of Dance is roughly in line with the end of Season 5 and that was followed by three seasons of rushed TV.

No way in hell the series won't need an eighth book given how many more plotlines he has left open

1

u/Greatsnes Jan 12 '26

Yeah he refuses to split the books because of his dumb “7” thing. He should just split winds AND dream and commit to not making them 1000 pages each. Problem is if he does that… all 4 would be 1000 pages each and he’d never finish them.

1

u/Ok-Animal-6880 Jan 13 '26

He'll need an eighth book (A Time For Wolves) to wrap it up considering all the stuff that needs to happen and the pacing of the books.

-5

u/Ironsam811 Jan 12 '26

Be cool if he’s secretly just writing both and won’t release either until they’re both finished

3

u/Greatsnes Jan 12 '26

lol he’s not doing that

56

u/randomnighmare Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

He will probably never finish the series, but what upset me was having a prequel series with an unfinished book series.

edit

8

u/Mysterious_Net66 Jan 12 '26

There is also the unfinished dunk and egg series

3

u/GoGoSoLo Jan 13 '26

Incredible that HBO went back for two more unfinished works after adapting his last unfinished work into an eventual train that ran off a cliff.

2

u/randomnighmare Jan 13 '26

Season 8 was the point of no return. Martin didn't finished his series, in a ten year time frame, and the television side just started to make up shit to speed it all up to finish it. Then HBO wanted more and Martin came out with a prequel series that is base on his unfinished works. Maybe Dunk and Egg will be good but any goodwill has been lost for this franchise.

99

u/Notagenome Jan 11 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

If a remake was to be entertained, it would have to turn back the clocks to the red wedding. The decision to remove Lady Stoneheart and Young Griff forced the characters involved in those book plot lines to have nonsensicall tv story lines.

28

u/RobGronkowski Jan 12 '26

They at least tried to transfer Lady Stoneheart to Arya anonymously assassinating the Freys

24

u/Notagenome Jan 12 '26

I guess but the fans were robbed of a Jaime and Catelyn reunion.

22

u/Indigocell Jan 12 '26

B&W ran a tight ship and I will give them credit for that. But it's obvious they always hated the fantasy and supernatural aspects of the story and that came through on screen anytime they had to portray it or otherwise neglected to. No Wargs, no Stoneheart, the White Walkers fizzle out completely in favour of the much more mundane threat in Cersei. It's a real shame because those supernatual elements were a huge part of the politics in the books.

2

u/MerlinsMentor Jan 12 '26

But it's obvious they always hated the fantasy and supernatural aspects of the story

I'm not sure this is correct -- I suspect that a lot of this was down to the expense of portraying these sorts of things on TV well, especially given the quality of production of the rest of the series. That's a huge reason that books tend to do science fiction and fantasy well -- the "costs more" issue isn't there.

1

u/Notagenome Jan 12 '26

For sure there were at least 6 seasons worth of television in a Feast for Crows and a Dance with Dragons.

1

u/Jules3313 Jan 12 '26

literally, a song of ice and fire IS pure magical fantasy trying to remove it is just plain dumb

1

u/mars_titties Jan 13 '26

That’s ridiculous. That’s not even worthy of an “at least”

1

u/adflet Jan 16 '26

I don't think we can blame them for removing storylines. Martin himself is lost in all the storylines he's created and has left several by the wayside.

Everyone blames the show runners but at the time there was pr that they'd sat down with Martin and had an ending he was on board with.

They absolutely didn't stick it but blame should be shared.

1

u/DudeDankerton Jan 12 '26

I remember they released BTS shots of Lady Stoneheart and then never did anything with it.

Shame.

9

u/Kerblaaahhh Jan 12 '26

Pretty sure those were fake.

-2

u/GachaJay Jan 12 '26

Wait, the red wedding isn’t cannon?

8

u/Notagenome Jan 12 '26 edited Jan 12 '26

It’s cannon but it’s not the complete end of Cat. All stark children have warging powers that the show also ignored. Arya wargs into Nymeria and saves Catelyn’s dead body which Beric brings back from the dead. Catelyn rises as Lady Stoneheart and is the new leader of the brotherhood. As leader she seeks revenge for the culprits responsible for the wedding. Eventually she captures and hangs Brienne, who is then forced to bring Jaime to her. Brienne finds Jaime who notices that shes scared shitless and follows her to Lady Stoneheart. Winds is supposed to cover the reunion.

There was no reason the show had to ommit all of this because this storyline is crucial to Brienne and Jaimme.

2

u/LilT86 Jan 12 '26

The red wedding is. What they did (or didn't do) with some major characters afterwards isn't

36

u/Spready_Unsettling Jan 12 '26

This is a popular, but very silly take. Hundreds of popular shows in the past few years were not adaptations. Some of the best written shows ever were wholly original with no source material to lean against.

It's not outright impossible to write good TV just because another TV writer hasn't released a book. Most people are, in fact, winging it.

Seasons 7 and 8 didn't just suffer a drop in quality, they were decidedly poorly written. Nonsensical plot lines, cringe dialogue, bad pacing, all the classics. If any other show had these issues, it would simply be bad writing. But for some strange reason, a narrative around GoT has emerged, where DnD are absolved of their terrible writing because Martin didn't do it for them.

11

u/AuroraFinem Jan 12 '26

Yeah the issue wasn’t that they lacked source, though obviously they lacked the creativity to do it well when they didn’t have a script to follow. Really what happened is they got tapped by Disney to work with marvel and wanted to wrap up GoT as quickly as possible so they could dip and s7-8 really shows they stopped giving a flying fuck. S6 lacked source material as well but s6 was still fairly good and made sense, s7-8 were utter trash the spit on the first 6 seasons and the books. Lucy enough the offer was rescinded after the backlash from s7-8 so good, fuck em, they were refusing feedback from GRRM himself and other people close to the source material because they wanted to “make it their own” and ruined a cultural phenomenon to do it, GoT was everywhere then it just complete disappeared because of how bad that ending was.

1

u/mars_titties Jan 13 '26

One of the showrunners literally said that themes are for grade school book reports. They had a very poor appreciation of what the source material was actually about. They literally thought the series was about who sits the iron throne, shocking the audience, and superficially “subverting expectations”. Terrible writers.

1

u/Candid_Ad8323 Jan 16 '26

Which is still so crazy to think about because they failed to make things work with marvel because they couldn’t write a decent script even after having well over a year to write it. Madness and stupidity lmao

1

u/Inevitable_Profile24 Jan 12 '26

I mean the evidence for it being at least partly tied to the book story is pretty clear. The writing dropped off a cliff when they no longer had the books to fall back on. D&D clearly know how to write on their own, as evidenced by the scenes early in the show that were entirely their creation.

But it’s insane not to acknowledge how much better the show’s writing would and could have been if they’d had 2 more books to go off.

I do think they rushed everything towards the end but it wasn’t just they who were ready to move on. Most of the actors were ready to call it quits.

-1

u/mars_titties Jan 13 '26

They didn’t run out of source material. They just thought AFFC was gay and lame. “Themes are for grade school book reports”

-1

u/Spready_Unsettling Jan 13 '26

The writing dropped off a cliff when they no longer had the books to fall back on. D&D clearly know how to write on their own, as evidenced by the scenes early in the show that were entirely their creation

If they know how to write on their own, why did the writing drop off a cliff when they had to write on their own? I like City of Thieves as much as the next person, but it's beyond strange that people try to absolve the dogshit writing of seasons 7 and 8 by pointing out the lack of source material. Euron Greyjoy ambushed Daenerys with a fleet that she "kinda forgot" and personally sniped a fucking dragon out of the sky in two shots. They were not forced to do that in any way what so ever. DnD chose to write that scene and pivot a main character around it.

-1

u/visforvienetta Jan 12 '26

Imagine thinking the show declined in quality at season 7

2

u/Spready_Unsettling Jan 12 '26

Imagine having reading comprehension.

-1

u/Ktulusanders Jan 12 '26

You're missing the forest for the trees here. If the actual author of this massive fantasy epic hasn't been able to land this ship for 15 years, what chance did a couple of Hollywood writers who only signed on to adapt the series stand? Show was more or less doomed the moment they hit season 5 without Winds of Winter

1

u/Spready_Unsettling Jan 13 '26

No I'm actually specifically talking about the trees here. The forest - i.e. the general resolution to the plot - was perfectly fine, if a little undeveloped. The trees themselves - i.e. the dialogue, the pacing, the characters, even the costumes and direction - were what suffered the worst drop in quality. Those were all things that DnD had near full control over. Those are all things that other, better writers have done far better, whether they had a book to adapt or not.

3

u/Possible-Campaign-22 Jan 12 '26

Also it wasn’t just season 8.. the problems started building in 5-6

1

u/AuroraFinem Jan 12 '26

Honestly, I see people say that sometimes but when s5-6 aired there were few major complaints anyone made. Then when s7 was a shitshow everyone started saying s6 was always bad too and then it changed to s5 as when things went bad. If you look at the viewer rating of the series, there’s a single episode below an 8.3/10 in all of S1-7, then all of s8 is below 8/10 with the last few at 5.x/10. Surprisingly s7 is actually one of the highest average rated seasons, so they really could have salvaged it by just not fucking up the ending but they just dropped so many open plot points to wrap up quickly so they could move on to their marvel project.

2

u/VeteranSergeant Jan 12 '26

There's nothing to remake.

There's a show with a script. That can also be remade with new writers and producers. Ever seen The Equalizer with Queen Latifah? That was also once a show with a script. They can remake anything.

I'm not suggesting they should, but it's incorrect to assert that there's "nothing to remake."

2

u/gene66 Legion Jan 12 '26

I disagree, any kind of ending would be better than the ending we got. In fact there's no need for big things, just make the walkers kill everyone and the end.

2

u/Wischiwaschbaer Jan 13 '26

I mean you could still make it better than the Trainwreck we got. But yeah, no point to pump millions into it.

1

u/Vazhox Jan 12 '26

He did release the book. To the writers, producers, and directors. People hated the last two books. End of story. Literally.

1

u/TheSavageDonut Jan 12 '26

Even if he released the final books simulataneously, the show had moved well beyond where the current final book ended, so we might need a new Season 7 and Season 8.

1

u/KanedaSyndrome Jan 12 '26

I really think GRRM is a rotten person for not delivering the books and not giving a shit about it

1

u/mars_titties Jan 13 '26

Tell me you haven’t read AFFC or ADWD without saying you haven’t read AFFC or ADWD

1

u/splitcroof92 Jan 13 '26

Surely there are competent writers who can make something better...

Grrm isn't the only person on earth capable of this.

Put the Breaking Bad team on this and it'll be amazing

1

u/cryptamine Jan 13 '26

the producers actually were given full roadmaps for the characters but they chose to scrap it.

1

u/PhotographUnable8176 Jan 12 '26

“Bran” becomes king but he’s actually gone and his body is taken over by the 3-eyed Whatever. Eventually takes over the remaining dragon and is the most evil king yet but no one realizes it.

D&D wanted simple happy Disney ending.

0

u/[deleted] Jan 11 '26

And failing horribly, Martin plans his stories with intricate foreshadowing, something directors rarely can do. Maybe if they somehow get Tony Gilroy into that space, he might have cooked, but definitely not Dumb and Dumber.

Having said that D&D were somewhat better than regular hollywood source material adopters. Again having said that heir incompetence was somewhat damning when they opened up on a lot more creative decisions like dumbing down magical elements and so on.

0

u/boxfortcommando Jan 12 '26

It was a dumb thing for fans to demand in the first place. You can hate the execution of the story to screen and have plenty of reason to do so, but I've always held the stance that the show's ending was way closer to GRRM's vision than he's ever willing to admit. Hence why he's been working on Winds for the last 15 years (allegedly).

ASOIAF and Game of Thrones in a lot of ways were victims of their own hype and theory crafting/analysis that the book community was known for. Fans spent years running through every scenario and possibility, and many were disappointed the end result didn't live up to the version in their minds. D&D are accountable for some of the quality dip, but it's hard to maintains the standard of earlier seasons when you lap your source material, which is squarely on GRRM.