George R.R. Martin has said that if he never completes Game of Thrones sequel Winds of Winter (or the book after that), there's no plan for anyone else to step in. Instead, his Song of Ice and Fire series simply "won't be finished."
Speaking to The Hollywood Reporter about his lack of progress on his next novel, Martin said he would "hate" to give up on the series — though admitted he was still around 1,100 pages in.
This figure — 1,110 pages — is one that he's quoted since at least December 2022, when he mentioned the same number during an appearence on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. (Yes, it really has been that long. And if it makes you feel even older, A Song of Ice and Fire's most recent entry Dance with Dragons came out in 2011, during Obama's first term.)
"It would feel like a total failure to me," Martin said when asked if he should just accept he will never finish A Song of Ice and Fire. "I want to finish."
And yet, the 77-year-old author has seemingly been kept distracted over recent years, with work as a producer on Game of Thrones' various TV spinoffs and AMC series Dark Winds, as well as his continued publishing of various A Song of Ice and Fire companion novels. (During the interview, Martin revealed he had begun two new Dunk and Egg adventures in 2025, set in Winterfell and in the Riverlands, though it didn't sound like he had yet finished either.)
If he did die before completing A Song of Ice and Fire, the series simply "won't be finished," Martin insisted. "It'll be like The Mystery of Edwin Drood," he continued, mentioning the novel that Victorian author Charles Dickens left incomplete at the time of his death. (Numerous other authors have offered their own endings to Edwin Drood over the years, and it has been adapted several times with these attached.)
When asked how much more he needed to write for Winds of Winter, Martin simply suggested there was plenty yet to do. "If I wound up doing everything in my head, this could be the longest book in the series," he suggested. (Winds of Winter is already longer than Dance with Dragons, which is acknowledged to be the longest in the series to date at 1,056 pages for its U.S. hardcover edition.)
So what is taking so long? Martin placed part of the blame on the numerous additional viewpoint characters he added in the series' fourth book A Feast for Crows, some of whom were sidelined to get Dance with Dragons out the door. These now need reintroducing into the story, which means more of a juggling act between an increasingly large cast.
And then there's the fact that Martin is seemingly spending a lot of the time he is writing Winds of Winter actually rewriting what he's got down already — so those 1,100 pages he'd finished in 2022 may not be the same as he has now.
"I will open the last chapter I was working on and I'll say, 'Oh f***, this is not very good.' And I'll go in and I'll rewrite it," Martin admitted. "Or I'll decide, 'This Tyrion chapter is not coming along, let me write a Jon Snow chapter.' If I'm not interrupted though, what happens — at least in the past — is sooner or later, I do get into it.
"I wrote a Tyrion chapter I just loved," he added. "Then I looked at it and said: 'I can't do this, it will change the whole book. I'll make this into a series of dreams. No! That doesn't work either…"
The interview includes reflections from Martin on the recent loss of many writers he had been close to, as well as the passing of Hollywood legend Robert Redford, who came out of retirement last year for a brief cameo with Martin in Dark Winds.
"George, the whole world is waiting, make a move," Redford says to Martin in the scene — a nod to the world's lengthy wait for Winds of Winter. The moment was Redford's last on-screen appearance before he died, something Martin said "just seems so f***ing weird."
Asked about the rude question he was asked at a convention last year, when a fan suggested Martin might not be "around for much longer," Martin said he was aware of the online speculation around his age and health. "They say, 'He lied to us, he is going to die soon, look how old he is. I really didn’t need that shit,” he said, referring to the fan question. "Nobody needs that shit."
But does Martin still feel motivated to finish? By way of an answer, Martin shared an anecdote about Dune writer Frank Herbert, who "didn’t like Dune anymore and he didn't want to write any more Dune books," at the end of his life. "But he felt locked in by the success of Dune, so he kept writing them," Martin noted. Did he feel similar? "I'm not necessarily tired of the world [of Ice and Fire]," he concluded. "I love the world and the world-building. But, yes, I do."
As part of the same interview, Martin has opened up about his "abysmal" working relationship with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, and we've heard the first word of a potential HBO Game of Thrones sequel series starring Arya Stark.
Image credit: Christoph Soeder/Picture Alliance via Getty Images.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
