Licensing

George R.R. Martin was inspired to write the novel series "A Song of Ice and Fire" after years of writing for restrictive television budgets and deliberately wrote the series to be nearly unfilmable. After the success of The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001) Martin was approached to license the novels into a series of films, one project was proposed using only Daenerys' story line, and another project proposed only including the conflict between the Starks and Lannisters.