George R.R. Martin on The Winds of Winter, a Game of Thrones movie, and Season 5

George R.R. Martin has had a whirlwind of a week, with a red carpet premiere and epic fan event to celebrate the upcoming fourth season of Game of Thrones. In a new interview with the Wall Street Journal he admits that it’s time to get back to business. “I gotta get some of these monkeys off my back, including ‘The Winds of Winter’—the big monkey, King Kong.” Which he reveals he is writing “page by page, sentence by sentence” and hopes to finish it soon.

In fact, he even shelved what was a proposed cameo on the show, as he couldn’t afford to take any more time off. “The cameo we had planned would’ve involved me going to Croatia, and I just couldn’t find the time between all my other trips and my speaking engagements and the work I had to do to take off time to fly to Croatia.”

Martin also discusses his recent comments about the possibility of ending Game of Thrones with a movie, which he admits got him into a bit of trouble.

“This is all pie-in-the-sky stuff. People are asking me how the series is going to end. Is it going to be seven seasons? Is it going to be 10 seasons? Are there going to be movies? We talked about all these possibilities. But right now we have four seasons. That’s all that’s been ordered. HBO has not ordered season 5, so we certainly don’t know about season 7, season 10, or any movies.

But there’s a lot of possibilities that are being kicked around, and it all depends on so many things. Will our ratings continue to go up? Will the show continue to be popular? Sometimes shows fall off. Sometimes people change. Executives change or something, and the new guy doesn’t love the show. You don’t know anything.

I worked in Hollywood from ’85 to ’95, and the one thing I learned is nobody knows anything and it’s a day-to-day process. So right now we’re enjoying season 4 and we’re hoping we’ll get an order for season 5 within a month or so, and then we’ll do that one. And then we’ll see where that leads.”

Season 5 will certainly lead to another episode penned by Martin himself. He won’t reveal anything about the episode, as they haven’t started writing scripts yet, and are still breaking down the season as a whole.

“I haven’t started on it yet. We’re still breaking down what happens in season 5. I had a meeting with [showrunners] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] just a couple of days ago here in New York to discuss the overarching plots of season 5. We’re starting on season 5 right now.”

For more from Martin’s interview, visit WSJ.Com.

• Published on 03/22/2014 at 5:16 PM CDT
• Last updated on 10/21/2016 at 12:43 PM CDT