Game of Thrones creator George R.R. Martin has discussed his broken relationship with House of the Dragon showrunner Ryan Condal, which the author has candidly described as "worse than rocky" and "abysmal."
While Martin's displeasure with House of the Dragon's ongoing story development is nothing new, a profile piece published today by The Hollywood Reporter includes eye-opening new detail from Martin on the breakdown of his relationship with Condal — and the extent to which HBO executives had to manage the pair behind the scenes of the show's production.
Martin's unhappiness with Condal appears to have reached its zenith during a contentious Zoom call where the showrunner laid out his vision for House of the Dragon's third season. Martin said he responded to Condal's plan with numerous objections, and ultimately stated: "This is not my story any longer."
"I hired Ryan," Martin said, reflecting on happier times. "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."
The profile piece notes an initial display of support by Martin for Condal towards the end of season one, when the latter had a falling out with his fellow co-showrunner on the series, Miguel Sapochnik. Martin says Condal asked for his support, which he gave, and Sapochnik departed the show shortly afterward.
"Then we got into season two, and he basically stopped listening to me," Martin continued, discussing how his relationship with Condal began to deterioate. "I would give notes, and nothing would happen. Sometimes he would explain why he wasn't doing it. Other times, he would tell me, 'Oh, OK, yeah, I'll think about that.'
"It got worse and worse, and I began to get more and more annoyed. Finally, it got to a point where I was told by HBO that I should submit all my notes to them and they would give Ryan our combined notes."
This then led to the now-infamous and swiftly-deleted blog post penned by Martin in September 2024, which publicly criticized House of the Dragon's direction and said more "toxic" changes from his books were to come. While offering praise for the series' writing, direction and acting, Martin slammed the plot decision to kill off a particular character and went into detail as to why he disagreed with the choice. At the time, Martin also suggested Condal had gone back on a promise to balance the change with another plot point — that had then seemingly been abandoned.
Within hours, the blog post disappeared from Martin's website, and HBO had issued a statement supporting Condal while attempting to lower the temperature. In today's profile piece, Martin says the blog post disappeared after HBO contacted Martin's manager, who had Martin's assistant remove the post while Martin himself was asleep.
"I would've put it back up, but then I would've looked like an idiot," Martin said of the incident. "And 80 percent of it was praise, but that's not what people focused on."
For his part, Condal has chosen not to comment further on the situation, but has pointed to a previously-reported statement he gave which claimed that Martin had become "unwilling to acknowledge the practical issues at hand in a reasonable way."
Martin is now back working on the show in some capacity, though the author said he was unable to comment on the specifics.
"George and Ryan had a disagreement on the direction of season three," an HBO source told The Hollywood Reporter. "At that point, it was clear that the process and communication with them was broken and needed a reset. So there was naturally a period where everyone took a step back for a while until we could figure out a new way forward."
As part of the same piece, fresh details have come to light on another HBO project — a proposed Game of Thrones sequel series starring Arya Stark. Still in its early stages of development, the idea would seemingly replace previous plans to develop a spin-off based around Jon Snow.
Image credit: Gerald Matzka/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
Even after the holidays and the many sale events leading up to them, January has had some surprises up its sleeve when it comes to video game deals, particularly over at Best Buy during its Winter Sale. The retailer has quite a few discounts worth checking out right now, including a particularly solid deal on Ninja Gaiden 4.
As part of Best Buy’s Winter Sale, Ninja Gaiden 4 has dropped to $39.99 for both PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X. Compared to its retail price of $69.99, this saves you $30 overall. Keep in mind that this sale only runs until January 19. Be quick to grab it before the discount disappears.
Ninja Gaiden 4 for $39.99
For those looking to jump into an action game right now, Ninja Gaiden 4 is certainly worth checking out. Our review from IGN’s Mitchell Saltzman said, “Despite its disappointing story and bland level design, Ninja Gaiden 4's excellent combat still make it one of the best 3D action games in recent memory.”
It even earned a runner-up nomination for Best Action Game of 2025, as it’s a “pure action fan’s action game, featuring some of the best melee combat we've seen in years, bolstered by aggressive enemy AI, excellent weapon design, and the ability to let your creativity run wild by giving you the freedom to hotswap between all of your weapons on the fly.” If that’s sold you, why wait to grab it? No better time than when it’s $30 off.
As mentioned earlier, January has seen quite a few video game deals catch our eye alongside this one. Also in Best Buy’s Winter Sale that’s worth a look is Sonic Racing: CrossWorlds, which has dropped to $45, but that’s not all. Our breakdown of Best Buy’s Winter Sale highlights even more gaming goodies worth grabbing while they’re still discounted. Outside of Best Buy, Amazon even has some good offers available at the moment, including deals on Assassin’s Creed Shadows for PS5 and Donkey Kong Bananza.
Hannah Hoolihan is a freelancer who writes with the guides and commerce teams here at IGN.
If you're seeking the absolute best of the best in PC gaming performance, look no further than Alienware's flagship Area-51 prebuilts. Following CES 2026, Dell has discounted an Alienware Area-51 AMD Ryzen X3D Edition RTX 5090 gaming PC to below $5,000 for the first time ever after an $800 discount. The Ryzen X3D Edition is essentially the second generation version of the Area-51 with a more powerful CPU replacement from AMD instead of Intel.
Alienware Area-51 Ryzen Edition RTX 5090 Gaming PC
The Alienware Area-51 is Dell's flagship gaming PC. Unveiled during last year's CES, the Area-51 is a super-sized upgrade to the mainstream Aurora R16 system. The significantly larger chassis features more premium build quality and a redesigned cooling system with greater net airflow. In fact, this is the only model that Dell feels comfortable enough to equip with the hot and power hungry GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card. The first wave of Area-51 systems featured Intel CPUs exclusively, with AMD X3D options only available since late November.
This particular configuration is equipped with an AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D CPU, GeForce RTX 5090 graphics card, 32GB or DDR5-6400MHz RAM, and a 1TB SSD. Additional system details include a 360mm all-in-one liquid cooling system for the CPU and a massive 1,500W 80Plus Platinum power supply that allows plenty of headroom for future upgrades.
AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is the best gaming CPU for most people
The AMD Ryzen 7 9800X3D is considered to be the best gaming processor currently on the market and outperforms any Intel or AMD non-X3D chip in games thanks to AMD's 3D-V-Cache technology.
Although the 9800X3D is an absolute speed demon for gaming, it only has eight cores. If you regularly use your PC for non-gaming applications that benefit from as many cores as possible, then you can upgrade to an AMD Ryzen 9 9950X3D 16-core processor, which doubles the core count while offering similar gaming performance, for an additional $300.
The RTX 5090 is the most powerful graphics card ever
The Nvidia GeForce RTX 5090 has emerged as the most powerful consumer GPU on the market. Although with this generation Nvidia has prioritized software updates, AI features, and DLSS 4 technology to improve gameplay performance, the 5090 still boasts an impressive 25%-30% uplift over the RTX 4090 in hardware-based raster performance. If you want the absolute best performance for your gaming PC, there is literally no other option from any other brand.
Eric Song is the IGN commerce manager in charge of finding the best gaming and tech deals every day. When Eric isn't hunting for deals for other people at work, he's hunting for deals for himself during his free time.
HBO is in "very early development" on a Game of Thrones spinoff starring Arya Stark, following the collapse of a previous sequel idea that would have featured Jon Snow.
The Hollywood Reporter broke word of the project today in a detailed profile of Thrones author George R.R. Martin, who declined to comment on the unannounced project in detail.
Still, the report makes clear that this idea is being developed by HBO with a writer already on board (Quoc Dang Tran, who previously worked on Apple TV series Drops of God). No actors are cast, however — including Maisie Williams, who played Arya previously.
Firstly, it's reported that Harington personally pushed for a dark take on the series which saw Snow living alone "as a broken man with PTSD." After discarding his sword Longclaw and chasing off his direwolf Ghost, Snow would have spent time building cabins only to burn them down.
Most surprising of all was Harington's idea that he didn't want to play a hero, and wanted Jon Snow to ulimately die. Today's report states that it was HBO who ultimately baulked on continuing the project, considering Harington's take as too downbeat.
Still, Snow's character would have provided an easy route into the Game of Thrones world for new viewers — geographically separate, and alone from the rest of Thrones' surviving cast. Now, HBO reportedly hopes to pull off a similar trick with Arya — last seen by herself, setting sail for adventure — with a tale based in the continent of Essos.
How far this project develops still remains to be seen, but with a Marvel-style roadmap of upcoming seasons announced for House of the Dragon and new spinoff Knight of the Seven Kingdoms until 2028, it's clear HBO sees Game of Thrones as a major franchise for years to come.
Image credit: Jeff Kravitz/FilmMagic for HBO.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
The sequel to Todd Phillips’ smash hit Joker, the movie musical known as Joker: Folie a Deux, was far from the hit the original was, but some people liked it, namely Warner Bros. heads of film Pamela Abdy and Michael De Luca, who stand by the 2024 box office flop despite its reception.
“I really liked the movie. I still do,” Abdy told TheWrap in a recent interview alongside De Luca, who added: “It was really revisionist. It may be that it was too revisionist for a global mainstream audience, but I thought that Todd and his screenwriting partner Scott (Silver) did the thing that most people making sequels don’t do, which is they decided to not repeat themselves. I do give them immense props for not repeating themselves, but it just turned out to not connect with the audience.”
The negative critical reception and financial failure of the film, which featured returning star Joaquin Phoenix as the Joker and Lady Gaga as Harley Quinn, led to rumors that the two WB execs were potentially going to be ousted from their high profile positions at the time.
The shift in tone from gritty crime drama to introspective courtroom drama jukebox musical didn’t resonate with audiences, according to the box office. It amassed $207 million worldwide, which is a far cry from the original film’s enormous $1 billion box office. Plus, the film had a reported budget of about $200 million, so the gross alone is an easy financial failure before you even take the first film’s returns into account.
Reviews were wholly negative for the project — IGN said the film “[wasted] its potential” at the time of release — and it failed to receive any major awards nominations, unlike its predecessor, which was recognized for two Academy Awards out of a solid nine nominations.
However, according to these execs, these incidents come with the territory of their jobs. “You get a veteran’s thick skin,” De Luca said. “I’ve certainly had flops in my history. I have been lucky enough to have hits in my history. But I try to remember something someone told me once: Everyone has flops, but not everyone has hits. You just try not to torture the ones that don’t work.”
In January last year, Lady Gaga opened up about the negative reception to Joker: Folie à Deux after a period of silence following its release. “People just sometimes don’t like some things,” Gaga said. “It’s that simple. And I think to be an artist, you have to be willing for people to sometimes not like it. And you keep going even if something didn’t connect in the way that you intended.”
“When that makes its way into your life, that can be hard to get control of,” Gaga said of the fear of failure. “It’s part of the mayhem.”
Elaborate movie tie-in popcorn buckets are all the rage these days at movie theaters. These buckets are pricy — clearly a cash grab in the era of dwindling ticket sales — but they’re often cleverly designed, and they act as collectibles for fans of the franchises they represent. It seems that the people at Amazon have noticed this trend and wondered: what if we made an expensive popcorn bucket for a TV show? The result is a Fallout-themed popcorn bucket (see it at Amazon) for fans of the popular Prime Video show.
The bucket is designed to look like a rusty barrel, painted with chipping blue paint and emblazoned with “VAULT-TEC” on its side. Though I’m somewhat annoyed by the entire concept of the thing, I have to admit it looks pretty great. This Amazon-exclusive collectible is up for preorder now for $24.99. It releases January 29, just in time for the Fallout season 2 finale, which airs February 4.
The bucket is smaller than it might appear, with dimensions of 8.27 x 8.27 x 10.24 inches, meaning it’s not quite a foot tall. However, I doubt many people will actually make popcorn and eat it out of this thing while watching Lucy MacLean, Maximus, and The Ghoul go about their business in the Wasteland. It’s a collectible, meant to be placed on a shelf for display. And if it looks as good in person as it does in the pictures, it should appeal to plenty of Fallout fans.
In other Fallout collectible news, you can pick up four new Fallout TV Funko Pop figures: a giant Deathclaw, the robo-cowboy Victor, as well as Hank MacLean in Power Armor and Caesar. Those are out May 24. And if you’re a super-fan, you can preorder a working Pip-Boy replica from the IGN Store, set to release in June. In the meantime, you can check out our reviews of all the Fallout episodes that have been released so far.
Chris Reed is a commerce editor and deals expert for IGN. He also runs IGN's board game and LEGO coverage. You can follow him on Bluesky.
Masahiro Sakurai, the creator of Super Smash Bros., has revealed the reason why the series' food various items each heal your character by a specific amount.
Writing this week on Twitter/X, Sakurai simply dropped the detail out of nowhere — 25 years on from when food was first introduced to Nintendo's hit fighting series, back in Super Smash Bros. Melee.
In short, the more calories a piece of food is likely to have, the more it has been programmed to heal. So, while a bunch of healthy grapes might heal your character by 4% in Smash Bros. Ultimate, a pizza or stack of pancakes will heal by 7%.
While some had guessed the logic previously, this is fans' first official confirmation why Smash Bros.' foodstuffs act this way. And, peering at the Smash Bros. Wiki page on food, the theory generally stands up to reality.
Super Smash Bros. Melee introduced 28 food types, a total that increased to 36 in Smash Bros. Ultimate — though the actual range has varied over the course of the franchise.
Looking just at Ultimate, then, low healing items include cherries (1% damage healed), kiwis, lemons and tea (all 2%), a lollipop (3%) and cola (3% — guess it's diet).
Mid-tier healing items include squash soup (4%), cheese, chocolate and dumplings (all 5%), plus a hot dog, corn dog, cherry pie and popcorn (all 6%). Curiously, a salad heals by 5% — though its image shows it is covered in some kind of dressing.
Undo your top button and we're onto the top-tier foodstuffs by damage healed, such as the hamburger, pancakes and pizza (all 7%), spaghetti (8%), strawberry shortcake (10%), steak (11%) and turkey (12%). Curiously, bread is also in this category (at 10%) — though it is the whole loaf.
So, next time you're playing Super Smash Bros. and food items spawn on-screen, head for the tastiest-looking, highest calorie option. Wombo combo? Popcorn combo, more like.
Tom Phillips is IGN's News Editor. You can reach Tom at tom_phillips@ign.com or find him on Bluesky @tomphillipseg.bsky.social
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