I recently got talking to an associate who has studied and worked in the entertainment industry. She’s not a GoT fan, but she knows a bit about the ending, so being my obsessive self, I couldn't help but ask her some questions about adaptions. I'll been mulling over what she said for a little while, but in light of some discussion recently, I thought it might be useful to try to summarise it, because it certainly made me feel better. I'll try to do this justice:

(a) It is unfair to compare a book and a TV show or movie because they are so different - there are tens of thousands of books published every year and most have fairly niche audiences, while there are comparatively very few movies or TV shows and anything too niche cannot survive, so everything has to have broader appeal.

(b) While most authors dream of a Rowling-style smash hit, and all publishers demand a profit, most book writers do not write solely with the aim of getting rich. TV, however, is always about making as much money as possible, either directly or by generating 'buzz' through media coverage and awards etc that lead to network getting more subscriptions or interest in other shows.

(c) All adaptions sit somewhere on the spectrum between source faithfulness and simply borrowing a general concept. Lots of factors influence this, but generally if people come to a movie/show from popular books (eg. Harry Potter, Tom Clancy), the show runners will be expected to do a more faithful adaption, because people want the books onscreen. Where it is the opposite way around, and the show runners are simply inspired by an book or idea, there can be a greater divergence because most of the audience will judge the show independently of the books. This can make for a better show but a less faithful adaption.

(d) faithful adaptions are really hard and almost impossible in big stories with lots of plots and characters. You always have to focus, and that means characters are cut and side plots stripped. Popular fiction adaptions strip the plot to the main story, while literary adaptions focus on a few characters and ask what the main theme of the book is and rework the plot around that (ie. themes are really important!). If you stick to character and theme, you can sometimes go wild with other parts of the adaption - Shakespeare and Jane Austen often get this treatment, and everyone recognises the inspiration but no one expects a faithful adaption of them anymore.

(e) If you have a show or film that is very popular and makes more money than the books, then unless the writer has a great lawyer and lots of involvement, what has made the show make money or buzz will be given priority over a faithful adaption of the books every time. This is one reason why TV shows and movie franchise adaptions usually become less faithful over time, particularly if they become popular. The butterfly effect operates too.

(f) Unless there was a contractual requirement, or bts friendship or moral obligation, she’d be surprised if the goal of the show runners of a show like GoT would be to match the TV show ending with that of a book series most viewers would never read. The goal of the show is media, critical acclaim and money (although I would suggest they didn’t get the latter two, lol).

I suppose none of this is new, but I thought it was an interesting insight, and it got me out of my funk, so make of it what you will.