A lot has been said about the seemingly never-ending delays when it comes to George R. R. Martin’s sixth novel in his A Song of Ice and Fire series. The books began way back in 1996, and the fact that it took until 2011 for the fifth book to arrive was already a lengthy wait when compared to other major fantasy series. However, that was nothing compared to the wait for the author’s sixth installment. The books were adapted into HBO’s massive hit series, Game of Thrones, in 2011, and longtime fans were hoping that the books, of which seven are planned, would be completed after a few years. Alas, by the time 2017 rolled around, the show was on a huge hot streak, everyone was talking about it, and the sixth book still hadn’t been released. It reached a point where jokes were being made about the process, including one from an unexpected yet great comedy film.
That movie is Logan Lucky, which stars Channing Tatum, Riley Keough, Adam Driver, and Daniel Craig, and was directed by Steven Soderbergh (Ocean’s Eleven trilogy), from a script by “Rebecca Blunt,” the psuedonym of Soderbergh’s wife, Jules Asner. The comedy film received widespread critical acclaim, yet a standout moment was a joke that references George R. R. Martin’s struggles to finish his next book, and the scene has only gotten funnier over the years, as Martin’s (lack of) progress has become even more egregious.
Logan Lucky is a comedy about a family who attempts a heist at the Charlotte Motor Speedway. There’s a scene involving inmates at a prison and their ransom demands during a riot where they hold guards as hostages. Among their demands are copies of A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter, the fifth and sixth books in A Song of Ice and Fire, for the prison library. They get the fifth book, but are told that the sixth book hasn’t been released yet.
Hilariously, one inmate claims that can’t be true because Martin said he’d have the book completed years ago. We watch as the warden has to frantically inform the disappointed inmates that Martin had trouble finishing the novel and that the Game of Thrones show had surpassed the books. His delivery of, “The series has jumped ahead! It’s no longer following the books,” is the cherry on top of a great scene. Martin’s inability to put out a new book had been a topic of jokes for years up to that point.
As noted, Logan Lucky, one of the best comedies of the 2010s, is nearly a decade old; the joke about The Winds of Winter taking so long has only gotten funnier with time. Nine years later, it seems like Martin is still no closer to finishing his book, though his last update in early 2026 said that he had over 1,000 pages completed. Meanwhile, the Game of Thrones TV series concluded two years after Logan Lucky was released, and since the books weren’t done, the show had to go its own route. Audiences and critics both ended up disappointed.
Many fans simply don’t believe we’ll ever get The Winds of Winter. If that is indeed the case, the joke from Logan Lucky will only keep getting funnier. There’s also the planned seventh installment, A Dream of Spring, that also needs completion. Until those books arrive (if they ever do), the ending of this series will stay being the butt of so many jokes.
You can stream Game of Thrones on HBO Max.
