George RR Martin revealed that the highly-anticipated Game of Thrones prequel has been put on hold due to the ongoing Writers Guild of America strike.
Members of the WGA went on strike at the beginning of the month over pay issues with ongoing negotiations over increased salaries, and many shows have been impacted or even pulled off the air.
The strike was officially announced on Monday May 1) and started the following day, marking the first strike in Hollywood since 2007.
It followed weeks of failed talks with the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP).
Series prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight – which is set a century before the events of Game of Thrones – has also been affected.
Addressing the situation on his website, the author, 74, wrote: ‘I am not in LA, so I cannot walk a picket line as I did in 1988, but I want to go on the record with my full and complete and unequivocal support of my Guild.
‘The proviso being, of course, that those scripts must be shot EXACTLY as they were as of midnight on May 1. Not a word can be changed, cut, added, not a scene can be altered. All that requires writing… and from now until the strike ends, the writers will be on picket lines, not on sets.’
The protest is the first-ever writers’ strike and the first in Hollywood of any kind in 15 years.
Meanwhile, chat show hosts Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers are reportedly set to pay their staff out of their own pocket during the third week of strikes, after NBC paid for the first two weeks of salaries.
Meyers came out in support of the WGA on Monday’s episode of Late Night, calling the salary increase ‘a reasonable demand.’
He said: ‘I love writing. I love writing for TV. I love writing this show. I love that we get to come in with an idea for what we want to do every day and we get to work on it all afternoon and then I have the pleasure of coming out here.
A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms: The Hedge Knight is due to air on Max.
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