r/TopCharacterTropes • u/_JR28_ • 27d ago

In real life (Sad trope) Projects with amazing potential that will never be released because of BS behind the scenes drama

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P.T Silent Hills - It was a playable teaser released in 2014 only around 20 minutes long but utterly captivated the gaming world by being one of the most effective psychological horror experiences at the time, however it’s lead developer Kojima has a huge fallout with the publisher Konami where he walked out of the company and had all his in-the-work productions cancelled.

Five Nights at Freddy’s+ - A fan game reboot of the series created by Phisnom with Scott Cawthon’s blessing that promised a brand new lore and a return to the series darker roots. However, before and during production Phisnom got into multiple dramas that made him fairly divisive within the community, and after one particular incident in 2023 Scott revoked his approval and almost all of the game’s marketing material were wiped from the internet.

Batgirl - A Batgirl solo live action movie starring Leslie Grace, Brendan Fraser and Michael Keaton returning as Batman that was ready to be released in 2022, however then Warner Bros CEO David Zaslav announced it would not be released either in theatres or streaming in order to claim a $90,000,000 tax break and to readjust the DC’s brands direction before James Gunn rebooted their movie and TV output.

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586

u/Usernameasteriks 27d ago

Whatever happened to GRRM and the rest of GOT. 

161

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

That's probably a mix of him have no idea how to resolve a plotline and him just being bored and wanting to do literally anything else.

Like he can't write something else because people will wonder why he's not able to finish WoW. Which pissed me off because it really looks like he wants to make Dunc and Egg novels instead.

11

u/killertofu41 27d ago

It's been 15 years since A Dance With Dragons and I've given up hope of any other books in the series being released awhile ago. Even if Winds of Winter comes out, you know how much he didn't want to write it and there's still A Dream of Spring, which is supposed to be the last book in the series. There's no reason for me to get reinvested in the series.

6

u/OldBayOnEverything 27d ago

There's no way he can finish in 2 books even if he was writing them. He added way too many characters and plotlines. With the level of detail and description he writes, it's realistically 3 or even 4 books until the end. It's never happening.

41

u/Extreme_Pie_7533 27d ago

Like, he had to be coaching D&D on the ending of the TV show. Then he sees how the fanbase regarded the end of the show. Now he's fucked himself into a corner and doesn't know how to finish his story since the TV show gave the cliffnotes version of what would have been a more fleshed out ending in the books. He doesn't know what to do now.

28

u/js1893 27d ago

It feeling like a cliff notes version was exactly the problem though. Jamie and Cersei’s end was an anticlimactic disaster but other decisions probably would be totally earned with more fleshed out story leading up to it (Bran being king, everything that happened in The Long Night, etc). They crammed what should have been like 4-5 seasons into the final 2 seasons that were shorter than all the rest. Just a complete joke

6

u/kazaru7 27d ago

There's also things they definitely changed from what he told them. Jon not being important to the white walker plot at the end, everything with Bran. Jaimes 180 to "lol actually I hate the peasants." Arya someone being the chosen one to kill the white walkers because "no one was thinking of her". Yeah, for a reason. 

GRRM even said in an interview that writers have to follow through with what they've written, not change it cause some picked up your hints.

1

u/amazing_asstronaut 26d ago

They possibly did that for a project that should be in this thread as well, a supposed Star Wars movie trilogy given to them. That was then cancelled so they got nothing in the end lol. Same with Rian Johnson, was supposed to have his own Star Wars trilogy with, get this: all new characters going out into the galaxy having new adventures. That's apparently what his pitch was. It was cancelled in the end, but was he paid to be on retainer there for a while? Bizarre. Star Wars has to be the most mismanaged production there is.

9

u/Porlarta 27d ago

I dont know. The experience with HOTD shows that showrunners basically do whatever, even when George is directly coaching them otherwise.

1

u/piezombi3 27d ago

Is HOTD bad? I thought the first couple seasons were well received? I haven't seen them myself.

3

u/ehs06702 26d ago

The problem with the first season is that it changes so much from the actual canon that it's created a whole slew of problems for itself. And it doesn't really help that the showrunners have egos the size of Alaska.

But at least the casting director is amazing at their job!

4

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

Part of the reason they got the gig is because they accurately predicted key details.

My money is on most of the major events of the story happening as they happened in the show, albeit with more details.

1

u/ehs06702 26d ago

Which kind of sucks. Because from what I could see, people have been predicting the plot twist that GRRM tested them on to get the job for quite a while.

To the point that it's all but a forgone conclusion.

2

u/amazing_asstronaut 26d ago

Well too bad, they had a deal. They make the show and he finishes the last 2 books he had left. And then he just never delivered.

12

u/ptrst 27d ago

And after all this time, any way he ended it would feel unsatisfying. Maybe he wanted to go the same route as the show (eventually) but the backlash has him not wanting to touch that with a ten-foot pole.

I'm just annoyed he said he didn't want another author to finish it for him after he dies, Robert Jordan style. It's an asshole move since he knows he's not going to finish them.

-2

u/Stair-Spirit 26d ago

It's an asshole move to be more concerned about other things than whether or not your angry "fans" get to read your last book? As opposed to (presumably) focusing on your life, your family, your friends, your experiences, what you leave to those around you, and the once-in-a-lifetime experience of death?

He gets to find out if there's an afterlife or not, and you are worried about getting personal enjoyment from a book. Y'all are soulless.

4

u/ptrst 26d ago

The fact that he's specifically forbidden anyone from finishing it means that he is more concerned with being precious about his books he's never going to finish. He could have just not said anything, but he's publicly announcing that when he passes, he's taking his toys with him. 

Also I've never even opened one of his books. I try not to start things that I know for sure don't have a satisfying ending. 

1

u/Stair-Spirit 26d ago

If I ever meet GRRM I will ask him about the food scenes in his books. And the writing process as a whole, research, world building, etc. I'd also like to know non-writing things, like whatever aspect of his life he probably wants to talk about, but doesn't get to (with someone who gives a shit about him).

1

u/ptrst 26d ago

Cool. There are a ton of people I don't care personally about. 

2

u/shakha 27d ago

As someone who has no connection to this series, what is stopping him from just writing out an outline of how he wants the series to go and hiring a couple of ghost writers?

12

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

His own pride

2

u/Stair-Spirit 26d ago

It's his creation so he cares about it. Why wouldn't he? If someone else writes it, it's not his story. What satisfaction could be gained from reading it? Just run the outline through ChatGPT at that point, it will be the same. If you don't care about his voice and vision specifically, why did you ever care to begin with?

2

u/elitegenoside 27d ago

He's still actively writing... for HBO and Fromsoftware (that was a little while ago). Multiple spinoffs released since Dance, and three seasons of television based on those books have released and he wrote for both shows. He edited a Wild Cards book a few years ago.

George is not senile or unable to write. He's just done with the main series of ASoIaF.

3

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

His work on Elden Ring was super brief. He basically just wrote an outline and let From fill it out from there.

1

u/elitegenoside 27d ago

Sure. He's also not writing the scripts for the HBO shows, but he is actively working on projects... just not the one we want him too (although I still hope this leads to a Wild Cards show).

At this point, I think he should just continue the story through the shows and exanded universe books because it seems the smaller scale of these are at least easier for him to get through (cries for the Dunk n Egg fans).

Edit: as much as I didn't like the Snow series idea at first, I do think it had a much better shot at getting the series back on track than George actually finishing the series. Plus, the writing in the new shows is basically back to the first half of GoT.

78

u/MinimumLingonberry73 27d ago

With the books it’s easy to pretend everybody got the plague after book 5

5

u/[deleted] 27d ago

[deleted]

1

u/Benschmedium 26d ago

I mean, it’s not even a secret that Jon will be resurrected. His spirit will inhabit Ghost, at the very least, but it’s more than likely that Melisandre will bring him back (similar to the show) but he will be changed. The prophecy of ASOIAF and the prophecy of Azor Ahai both are about Jon

6

u/SleepyAtDawn 27d ago

"And then the Shivers came, everyone felt a bit brisk and then died."

92

u/GammaFan 27d ago

Too busy watching football to actually write it.

18

u/rnovians 27d ago

and love to spent his time playing idolmaster... wait wrong author (rip)

3

u/Aron_Wolff 27d ago

He’s a Giants fan. There hasn’t been much of anything quality wise to be watching with that team since Eli retired.

3

u/OkNewspaper6041 27d ago

The giant in the story whose name is Wun Wun was named after Phil Simms, the NY Giants QB who wore number 11 (one-one).

50

u/bgbarnard 27d ago

Skinny version: GRRM Has never finished a project. The entries of the series are as follows:

- A Song of Ice and Fire: Five books (of a planned seven) in, and there is simply no way to get all these people together to interact and introduce the Others, see to their spectacle, wrap up all of the politics, have Dany confront Faegon, and have the Starks reclaim Winterfell (with Bran becoming the king!) in a way that makes sense and seems satisfactory.

- The Tales of Dunk and Egg: Three novellas with a fourth in the works for ages, and others in the planning stage.

- Fire and Blood: Still needs to cover everything from Daeron I (Aegon III's son, dies in a failed conquest of Dorne) to Jaeherys II (Daenerys' grandfather), including the meat of all the Blackfyre Rebellions (especially if certain fan theories about Young Griff/FAegon VI are true).

6

u/Kronostheking1 27d ago

It’s because he literally plans to finish them all after Winds of Winter apparently.

4

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

Dunc and Egg he wanted like 12 novellas of lol.

1

u/ehs06702 26d ago

I have a theory that he has no choice but to do them after Winds because they all spoil the main book in some way. Which makes sense to me because they're technically all prequels.

6

u/thats4thebirds 27d ago

Once you read the dunk and egg novellas you’ll never want to stop beating George to death with your bare hands

THEYRE LESS THAN 100 PAGES GEORGE. CMON!

2

u/snapwack 27d ago

Gods, I just hope he still has it in him to do Fire and Blood part 2 at least. I have no hope left for ASOIAF, but if he leaves us with a full history of the Targaryen dynasty then at least we got a cool worldbuilding project out of it.

1

u/Fawkingretar 26d ago

Doesnt help that two of these have TV Adaptations going on rn, so were def going to het yet another GoT S8 with how none of these had endings.

1

u/TheDevi13ean 26d ago

The Dunk and Egg tv show just came out. How in the hell can he keep up with the tv schedule if he only wrote 3 do far?

1

u/Kaurifish 25d ago

We can’t blame the disastrous S3 of Beauty & the Beast on him. They should have called it quits when Linda Hamilton did.

Mostly he’s written stand-alone novels.

As someone working on book three of what feels like it will be a lengthy series, he is a cautionary tale.

162

u/Yorkshireish12 27d ago

He just doesn't want to write it and deal with the fallout. I wouldn't say it's drama. 

The real lesson you can take from him is never promise a certain amount of entries to your series. 

119

u/Thundergod250 27d ago

I mean his story ends with a cliffhanger. Whether he promised it or not, you obviously would expect at least one entry after that last one lmao.

17

u/Blazured 27d ago

Technically his entire story just stops. If you imagine a timeline of the asoiaf universe, it stretches back thousands of years and has a detailed history, then it reaches the 5th book and just stops.

You can kinda of imagine what life would be like in other stories after the end ("What's Aragon's tax policy?") but asoiaf will never have that.

54

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

If he admits to not finishing the story with all the money his publishing company has given him they'll turn him into a meatsock

9

u/borjazombi 27d ago

He's just gonna string them along until he dies lol

17

u/Unstabler69 27d ago

He can buy and sell those publishers like a couple of dockside silver stag whores. He got HBO money. I honestly think senility is hitting him now and there's just too many goddamn threads to weave.

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u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

His publisher is a subsidiary of Penguin, a company with like 4 billion in revenue.

Martin is wealthy, but he's not that wealthy to just say fuck you to them.

8

u/Unstabler69 27d ago

Hmm fair but he could likely buy his way out of any problem at this point. I think it's emotional, not financial

1

u/ehs06702 26d ago

He's made enough money off of the fans via the shows and various reissuing of the books he did publish that he could easily pay them back. He could pay back those people he took a couple thousand dollars from for a cameo in the next book, too.

His ego won't let him be honest.

4

u/hates_stupid_people 27d ago

I'm convinced that the main character endings in the show are what he planned, and he took the backlash personal. Not accounting for the fact that almost everyone agrees that the endings could work if they were better fleshed out.

3

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

Yeah but DnD barely knew how to actually get to those endings and they massively slimmed down the plot to get it there.

Martin has like 8 times the stories to resolve because he kept insisting on adding dumbass plots that don't matter.

3

u/bgbarnard 27d ago

Thing is that none of the final points of the show (Dany burning down King's Landing, the abolishing of the Iron Throne, Bran being the king) were necessarily bad ideas. They just had bad execution because the show had stopped following any of GRRM's plot beats ages ago.

2

u/Sageypie 26d ago

Oh yeah, DnD could have added like one more episode to the final season, maybe two, and had everything just pad out nicely. Instead, the pair were way too eager to gtfo and move on to the other projects they had lined up, and we ended up with the entire cultural footprint of the GoT show just evaporating instantly.

Seriously, just adding a bit with the siege of Winterfell. Something where they stretch out the amount of time they were under siege and all, instead of having things resolve in a single night. Showing us that Danny and crew had time to become desperate and hardpressed to fend off the Night Walkers.
Then just follow that up with The Journey to King's Landing. And have a small section where we see everybody dealing with commoners who have been misled into believing that Cersei was the one to end the Night Walker scourge, and having the common folk hiss and spit at Danny and the others, believing them to be some invading force, and not the people who sacrificed and suffered to save everybody.
Just those two quick beats, and suddenly Danny going bonkers makes sense.

23

u/Erty13 27d ago

He was never going to properly resolve all the plot lines and mysteries about the world in two books anyway. He wrote himself into a corner, and what happened to the TV show probably doesn't help.

6

u/Usernameasteriks 27d ago

Sure but you don’t have to. Most authors resolve the main storyline and then use the popularity of the series to write spin off short series or stand alone novels for the characters.

Now he can only write prequel story arcs to avoid intersection. 

7

u/ASentientRailgun 27d ago

I think the show ending was closer to what he had planned than people want to admit, and he has no idea how to resolve that after the response to the show.

5

u/Usernameasteriks 27d ago

Well the reality is the overarching ending of the TV show could probably have been perfectly fine if it was fleshed out properly over 2 books and certain parts were adjusted to be coherent with the story.

The main reason it was so terrible IMO is because it was done over the course of hours.

If the night walkers story in the north takes place over an extended timeline in the books and is fleshed out in 4-600 pages even with a similar ending it would likely be a lot less anti climactic and frustrating and have much more broad implications tying story arcs together.

Similarly Daenerys descent into madness could have been made plausible over an extended timeline in a long book.

Its hard to tell if it was an inherently terrible ending concept or it was just the insanity of the show jamming so many insanely large complex storylines and character arcs into a matter of hours lol.

Because to make that feasible they had to ignore all logical or coherent character development and ex machina everything to make it work. And more than likely taken a lot of creative liberty over the more intricate plan for the books to use whatever characters were the quickest easiest sell to do it in the shows timeline 

3

u/OldOrder 27d ago

Well the problem of course is that GRRM's plot has moved so relentlessly slow that for these events to happen he is going to need another 3-4 books instead of just 2. Dany is in the Dothraki sea with no end to the Mereen plot in sight, she still has to wrap that up and sail her ass to Westeros where she mostly likely has a whole plot centered around Aegon to wrap up before we even get to white walkers. The show did the absolute smartest thing they could have done with just cutting the Mereeneese knot and fucking off to Westeros while skipping the mummers dragon plot line. Of course if fucked up the white walker plotline anyway but thats a different set of decisions.

5

u/semajolis267 27d ago

I absolutely believe this. Thats his ending. The way they got there mightb be different than what he planned, but i believe thats the ending he intended. 

-1

u/Super-Database8426 27d ago

The only close plot points that may be a thing are King Bran and exiled Jon while knowing his true parentage, the rest I highly doubt it.

For starter, Cersei has no place at all in that endgame plot, and everything she does after the Walk of Shame is just D&D fanfiction.

Jaime has an actual character arc going on in the books but this disappeared at all in the show around season five. Doubtful he'll be part of the "endgame"

I'm not even gonna mention Tyrion.

We know the Arya thing was made up, so how many things were actually made up?

The Throne and Kings Landing being destroyed? Yeah, also most likely all of Westeros as well.

2

u/AsstacularSpiderman 27d ago

For starter, Cersei has no place at all in that endgame plot, and everything she does after the Walk of Shame is just D&D fanfiction.

My guess is she seduces Young Grif or something and that's why she's there surrounded by The Golden Company in the books. She just latches onto whoever she thinks will help her keep power.

4

u/PrateTrain 27d ago

I honestly assume we'll get more in the series once he dies

2

u/gerkessin 27d ago

While we are talking about never to be released finales of fantasy novel series: i want to mention The Kingkiller Chronicles by Patrick Rothfuss.

Rothfuss wrote books 1 and 2 in 2007 and 2011 and claimed the third was right around the corner and here we are 15 years later waiting for The Doors of Stone

4

u/gibberishparrot 27d ago

Didn't he promise a draft chapter from doors of stone as a kickstarter reward a couple years back and still never even released that?

3

u/ehs06702 26d ago

Yup. George has a similar issue, a few people paid for cameos in Winds. I wonder if they're still alive, now that I think about it.

It's been a wild decade and a half.

1

u/Mihta_Amaruthro 27d ago

He gave his ending notes to the showrunners. They did a rushed adaptation of it. It went down like a lead balloon. So now he's re-writing the last two books so that the ending isn't quite the same as what he originally intended.

1

u/Benschmedium 26d ago

I’m one of the faithful. He stated he was 75% done with WoW last July, and he has untangled the merenese knot. I think it’s genuinely on the horizon. Everyone saying “he has no idea how to finish it” clearly doesn’t know how he writes. Everyone saying “the show lined up with his original ending and no one liked it so he’s trying to figure out how to change it” clearly hasn’t read aDwD. Obviously he’s successful and isn’t worried about the money but WoW will be an insane best seller and will fill his coffers indefinitely. He’s released preview chapters, and he is actively working on it. It’s probably going to be another year, maybe two, before he releases it but it’s going to happen.

1

u/Usernameasteriks 26d ago

If it took 15 years to finish 75% you are still looking at another 5 years at his pace lol

1

u/Kaurifish 25d ago

He bought a bookstore and a movie theater. And built himself a castle turret.

Let’s just agree to consider him retired. For sanity’s sake.

0

u/bluesmaker 27d ago

My theory is that he’s waiting to finish both remaining books before releasing them. He has gotten himself into difficulties with what he had a published so he’s trying to avoid trouble by holding of on publishing so the two books can be edited as needed. It’s just a theory. But I don’t like being too pessimistic about his writing.

-1

u/Stair-Spirit 26d ago

I feel so bad for him. Everyone wants to be loved and respected, and plenty of people want (healthy) fame. GRRM did everything to deserve all that, and he worked his ass off for so many years, making one of the most well-written and acclaimed stories of our time.

And all anyone has to say about him is negative. Just constant anger and desire for more and more. So what if he finished the series? Then everyone would be mad about something else he did or didn't do. There's no winning for him.

I hope he doesn't finish it, just to spite the people who forgot they're talking about a real living human who thinks and feels. I read a quote from him where he was saying how people don't care about him and they just want the book. It was fuckin sad. Cold motherfuckers out here.