Want to hear some terrible PR for the upcoming third season of HBO’s “Game Of Thrones” spin-off, “House Of The Dragon”? Its co-creator, George R.R. Martin, never one to mince his words, says his relationship with showrunner Ryan Condal is “abysmal” — an ugly bit of real-world smoke rising just as the series is supposed to be stoking the next round of Targaryen dragonfire.
Asked how things got “rocky” between the two, Martin didn’t bother with euphemisms. “It’s worse than rocky,” he said. “It’s abysmal.”
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He also framed the deterioration as a shift from an early partnership that, in his telling, actually functioned — at least during season one. “I hired Ryan,” Martin said. “I thought Ryan and I were partners. And we were all through the first season. I would read early drafts of the scripts. I would give notes. He would change some things. It was working really well — I thought.”
Where Martin draws the line is in season two, describing a process in which his notes stopped landing, whether through disagreement, inertia, or a slow fade-out of access. “Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me,” Martin said, explaining that feedback either went nowhere or was met with vague assurances.
The picture he paints gets even icier when he describes being redirected away from Condal entirely. Martin said HBO told him to submit notes to the network, which would then pass along “combined notes” to the showrunner — a corporate buffer that, in practice, reads like an author being asked to stop knocking directly on the writer’s room door.
From there, the reporting indicates the conflict escalated during a Zoom call with producers and HBO executives, where Condal presented his season three vision and Martin laid out objections — with sources claiming he ended with a blunt, existential marker: “This isn’t my story anymore.”
Martin also made clear there are limits to what he’ll say publicly about what followed. When asked why he returned to involvement after being asked to step back, he declined to elaborate: “I can’t talk about it.”
“House Of The Dragon” has had real issues behind the scenes. After season one co-showrunner Miguel Sapochnik, known for directing some of the more epic episodes of “Game Of Thrones,” left the series, the show moved forward under Condal’s stewardship, heading into season two — the very stretch Martin now describes as the point where the collaboration began to break down.
With “House Of The Dragon” season 3 expected to hit later this year — HBO chief Casey Bloys has said the plan is an early-summer 2026 return, possibly June, just outside the 2026 Emmy eligibility window — this is the kind of quote that lands like a cold splash on the audience right when the show should be rebuilding momentum.
For fans, the damage isn’t just “bad vibes” or internet noise; it’s trust. A prequel that lives and dies on inevitability and craftsmanship can’t really afford to have its original architect publicly signaling a broken collaboration as the next season approaches. Instead of looking ahead to where the war is headed, viewers are nudged into reading every major choice as a referendum on behind-the-scenes conflict — and that’s a brutal headspace to put your audience in when you’re trying to sell them on the next turn of the story. And surely HBO is not happy about it.
