While everyone was coming to terms with the penultimate episode of Game of Thrones on Sunday, a rumor about A Song of Ice and Fire author George R.R. Martin was running rampant online. According to Entertainment Weekly, former Thrones actor Ian McElhinney has allegedly told a fan convention crowd that Martin had secretly finished the sixth and seventh books in the series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring. Martin, however, quickly blasted these rumors in his personal blog.
McElhinney — who played Ser Barristan Selmy through the fifth season, when the character was killed off (much to the actor’s annoyance) — apparently claimed that Martin “[had] already written Books 6 and 7.” However, the author had “struck an agreement with David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss], the showrunners on the series, that he would not publish the final two books until the series has completed.”
As Martin responded in his blog on Monday, however, this is not the case:
I will, however, say for the record — no, THE WINDS OF WINTER and A DREAM OF SPRING are not finished. DREAM is not even begun; I am not going to start writing volume seven until I finish volume six… [The] books are not done. HBO did not ask me to delay them. Nor did David & Dan. There is no “deal” to hold back on the books. I assure you, HBO and David & Dan would both have been thrilled and delighted if THE WINDS OF WINTER had been delivered and published four or five years ago… and NO ONE would have been more delighted than me.
Until either book is actually completed (if this ever actually occurs), Thrones fans will just have to satisfy themselves with the series finale, the subsequent making-of documentary movie, and endless re-binges on HBO GO. Sorry!
(Via Entertainment Weekly)
