Stephen King is jealous of George R.R. Martin, or so he told the LA Times. He knew Martin had written a few episodes of “Game Of Thrones,” and that might have been what made him get involved in the most recent adaptation of his own work: “Under The Dome.”
The King canon has been transitioned to film dozens of times, but in the past he’s been less active in the process.
“It’s a responsibility to be directly involved,” he told Buzzfeed. “I sometimes tell people that the ideal situation is, if the thing is a success you can say, ‘It’s based on my work.’ If the thing is not a success, you can say, ‘Well, I didn’t have anything to do with it.'”
Working with “Under The Dome,” King has finally had the ability to have a hand in that responsibility. “It gave me a chance to set the arc in motion for the season,” he said to the LA Times, “and it gave me a little more input into what was going to happen.”
King was pleased with the idea of expanding “Under The Dome,” because the book turned out to be more “condensed” than he had planned. The story spanned three or four weeks, where he had initially intended to have a timeline of many months. Although, as Buzzfeed notes, “The idea that the novel could have been even more expansive may come as a surprise to readers who made it through Under the Dome’s daunting 1,000-plus pages.”
Other reasons King may be jealous of Martin include, but are not limited to, his glorious beard.