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Game of Thrones has recently overtaken the books which it is based on, A Song of Ice and Fire.

But is this the first / only case in history where a TV-Show or movie's progress overtakes that of the original story which it's adapting?

I ask because lately I've noticed a few "articles" or posts or whatever on the Internets which say that this is unprecedented.

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    I was planning to ask the same question for a long time, so thanks :-) I think what needs to be emphasised here is that GoT story progressed over the last novel, while they are still novels to be published. This is very different from a situation where something starts as an adaptation, but when the source material is consumed the movie/TV series continues on its own. This kind of situation happens quite often, while I think the GoT case is very rare, if not in fact a first occurrence.
    – Chanandler Bong
    Aug 26, 2016 at 6:41
  • Damn you, I was planning to ask this question!! +1 :-D
    – Rand al'Thor
    Aug 27, 2016 at 1:23
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    It happens a lot in anime as well. For instance Full Metal Alchemist overtook its source material and had to go its own way. It would later be remade as Full Metal Alchemist: Brotherhood, following the source material more closely.
    – System Down
    Aug 27, 2016 at 16:33
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    @SystemDown would you consider turning that into an answer?
    – Thunderforge
    Sep 1, 2016 at 4:16

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That's probably happenned a lot before but the only example I can think of is The 100

Here's the wikipedia page for The 100 books trilogy

You can see that by the end of book 3:

Clarke reunites with her parents at Mount Weather

While in the TV series, that storyline has been concluded:

Mount weather has been destroyed and the "Mountain Men" were killed by the end of season 2

and season 3 progressed with new story lines (The artificial intelligence, The sky people power struggles, the grounder politics, the impending war between the grounders and the sky people,.....)

Also, a fourth novel, will be released on December 2016

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Unless you are talking about a continuous series there has been at least one film that I know that came out prior to the book version of the story. That film was 2001 A Space Odyssey. As Clark pitched the book to his publishers the manuscript was passed on to Kubrick who began working with Clark on a screen play version of the book. Their interaction on the continuation of the story and the differences between film and book are documented inside the Preface to the 20th anniversary version of the novel.

There have also been several other movies and books written simultaneously but the novel has come out first in these cases. Most recently Ready Player One and The Martian.

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