George Raymond Richard Martin, or more famously known as George R. R. Martin, is a novelist, screenwriter, television producer, and short story writer. He is the author of the series of epic fantasy novels titled “A Song of Ice and Fire”, which have been adapted into the Emmy Award-winning series Game of Thrones. In this article, we will take a look at George RR Martin’s net worth in 2021.
George RR Martin’s Net Worth in 2021 (estimate): $120 million
George RR Martin’s net worth in 2021 is valued at $120 million. This is according to multiple reputable outlets such as Celebrity Net Worth.
George Raymond Martin was born on September 20, 1948, in Bayonne, New Jersey. Martin came from a once-wealthy family as his mother’s family owned a successful construction business, but they lost it all during the Great Depression.
During his childhood, Martin’s world predominantly consisted of “First Street to Fifth Street”, the location of his house and his grade school. This limited world made him want to travel and explore other places, but this was only possible at that time through his imagination. Due to this, he became an avid reader which helped him broaden his imagination.
Martin then started to write and sell monster stories to other neighborhood children, this included dramatic readings as well.
He attended Marist High School where he became a big comic book fan as he developed a strong interest in the superheroes published by Marvel Comics. He even credited the late Stan Lee as one of his greatest literary influences.
“Maybe Stan Lee is the greatest literary influence on me, even more than Shakespeare or Tolkien.” Martin said.
He bought the first ticket to the world’s first-ever Comic-con held in New York in 1964. The following year, he was awarded by the comic fandom with the Alley Award for Best Fan Fiction for his superhero story “Powerman vs. The Blue Barrier”.
In 1970, Martin earned a bachelor’s degree in Journalism as he graduated summa cum laude from Northwestern University’s Medill School of Journalism in Evanston, Illinois. He then completed his Masters of Science in Journalism in 1971.
Martin was eligible for the draft during the Vietnam War, but he applied for and obtained conscientious objector status, which allowed him to do alternative service work instead. He was a VISTA volunteer for two years attached to the Cook County Legal Assistance Foundation.
In the mid-70s, George RR Martin met George Guthridge at a science fiction convention. He then persuaded Guthridge to write in the field of speculative fiction, which he became successful as he won multiple awards for his work.
In turn, Guthridge helped Martin get a job at Clarke University (then Clarke College) as an English and Journalism instructor. He also became the Writer in Residence at Clarke from 1978 to 1979.
Despite enjoying teaching, the death of his close friend and fellow author Tom Reamy made Martin reevaluate his life and made him decide to become a full-time writer. When his wife graduated from Clarke in 1979, he resigned from his job and he and his wife moved to Santa Fe, New Mexico.
George RR Martin began selling short stories professionally in 1970, at the age of 21. His first sale was titled “The Hero”, and it was sold and published by Galaxy Magazine.
The sales of his short stories gave him a profit, but it wasn’t enough to pay the bills. Due to the American chess craze at that time and Martin’s chess skills and knowledge, he was hired to be a tournament director for the Continental Chess Association. This new job allowed him to have another source of income, and the tournaments only ran on weekends so he had time to work as a writer on the weekdays.
In 1982, Martin published a vampire novel titled “Fevre Dream” set in the 19th century on the Mississippi River. Unlike traditional vampire novels, his version is not supernatural creatures but a different species of human that evolved to have supernatural powers.
Fevre Dream gained critical success and he followed it up with another horror novel titled “The Armageddon Rag”. Unfortunately, it was a commercial failure and Martin said “it essentially destroyed my career as a novelist at the time”.
Despite the failure of The Armageddon Rag, Martin still got an offer from Hollywood producer Philip DeGuere Jr. saying that he wanted to adapt the novel into a film. The movie adaptation failed to materialize, but the two kept in touch and DuGuere offered Martin a job as a writer for the revival of the Twilight Zone.
Martin then moved to Hollywood to pursue a new career where he was a staff writer, executive story consultant, and co-supervising producer in shows like The Twilight Zone, Max Headroom, and Beauty and the Beast.
In 1991, Martin returned to writing novels as he had grown frustrated that his TV pilots and screenplays were not getting made, and that TV-related production limitations like budget and episode length were forcing him to cut characters and other plot lines.
He then began writing an epic fantasy series titled “A Song of Ice and Fire”. The epic was inspired by the Wars of the Roses and the novels The Accursed Kings and Ivanhoe. Martin originally planned it to have three volumes, it is currently slated to have seven.
The first was published in 1996 titled “A Game of Thrones”. It was followed by “A Clash of Kings” in 1998 and “A Storm of Swords” in 2000. The fourth installment titled “A Feast for Crows” became The New York Times No. 1 Bestseller in November 2005. It was the same for the fifth installment titled “A Dance with Dragons” which was published on July 12, 2011 — the novel won the Locus Poll Award for Best Fantasy Novel.
Two more novels are planned in the series, “The Winds of Winter and “A Dream of Spring”. Former collaborators said that they will not conclude the A Song of Ice and Fire series for him should Martin die before finishing it.
On November 20, 2018, George RR Martin released his new book titled “Fire & Blood”, which explores the history of House Targaryen.
In 2007, HBO Productions purchased the television rights for the A Song of Ice and Fire series. It premiered on April 17, 2011, titled “Game of Thrones”. It ran weekly for ten hour-long episodes and George RR Martin was heavily involved in the production of the TV adaptation of his series as well as the scriptwriting.
The series ran for 8 seasons and it concluded in 2019. Game of Thrones won numerous awards during its run, including 59 Emmy Awards (a record for total Emmy Awards win for a scripted TV series), 8 Screen Actors Guild Awards, and a Peabody Award.
Martin continues to lend a hand by way of producing. He signed an overall deal with HBO in March 2021 as he is set to produce a couple of novel adaptations for HBO. He also contributed to an upcoming video game titled “Elden Ring”.
Aside from that, Martin also has a blog titled “Not A Blog” which was previously published in LiveJournal but has then since moved to his own website.
George RR Martin is also a fan of NFL teams New York Jets and New York Giants, as well as MLB team New York Mets.
A lot are still waiting for the sixth and seventh volume of the A Song of Ice and Fire series, as well as his upcoming projects.
With that being said, the journey that he’s been through and the critical success that he achieved, are you surprised about George RR Martin’s net worth in 2021?
