It’s not exactly breaking the siege of Storm’s End or winning the Battle of the Trident, but A Game of Thrones author George R.R. Martin is undertaking a small-scale heroic effort of his own, buying a beloved local theater that has been dark for years.

After the local press in Santa Fe, NM, heard Martin had purchased the single-screen Jean Cocteau theater, the author/producer/procrastinator took to his not-a-blog over the weekend to discuss his motives behind buying the theater that had effectively gone unused since 2006.

“I love movies and old movie theatres,” he writes, “and it broke my heart to drive past the Jean Cocteau for these past seven years and see it sitting here, dark and decaying. Bringing this beloved theatre back to life is my small gesture at giving something back to Santa Fe, the community that has been my home since 1979.”

But lest you think you’ll walk up to the box office and see Mr. Martin taking yet another break from finishing the sixth volume of his A Song of Ice and Fire series, he cautions that he is “not a theatre manager, it won’t be me standing at the concession stand asking if you want butter on your popcorn.”

As for the financial risk involved, Martin doesn’t seem terribly worried.

“Might be that I will lose my shirt,” he admits, “but, hey, I’ve been very lucky, I have other shirts.”

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