HBO has finally agreed to shoot the pilot for George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire Series. For those of you who don't know, GRRM's series is considered by many to be one of the best fantasy series' every written; the author has been called the 'American Tolkien' and his last book in the series debuted at #1 on the New York Times Bestseller list. His impact within the genre of speculative fiction has been enormous, whether it be for something simple like creating ice dragons, or for his massively influential work on Wild Cards or ASoIaF.
Over a year ago, HBO optioned the rights for the series and considered the idea of dedicating one season to each novel; the first season would cover the first book, A Game of Thrones. But optioning the rights was very different from actually making the show. For the last year, writers have been laboring over the script and attempting to convince HBO that the series would be a worthwhile venture. Unfortunately, HBO has a whole slew of other pilots under consideration; rumour has it that one of them is a King Arthur/Knights type of show, which would be the main competition for ASoIaF, set in a comparable medieval world.
Will HBO actually go through with it? Who knows. The producer of the show, David Benioff, has commented, "High fantasy has never been done on TV before and if anybody can do it, it’s HBO. They’ve taken tired genres and reinvented them — mobsters in The Sopranos and Westerns with Deadwood.” Of course, subscribers to HBO might remember with some bitterness the debacle that was the end of Carnivale, a stunning series that HBO threw out after two seasons, resulting in one of the most gut-wrenching of cliff-hangers in recent TV history. I myself have never forgiven HBO.
But they were able to pull off Rome, and even included some curse tablets in it.
Lead curse tablets from the Nemea Museum.
So we can hope. For the moment, websites everywhere are crashing as rabid ASoIaF fans flock to the Interwebs, looking for news and huzzahing virtually from all corners of the earth. Mostly they are happy because finally, 'Winter is Coming.'
Hell yeah.
2 comments:
Katie,
Where was the "curse tablet" in Rome? Was that when Servilia sat out in front of Atia's villa for days then, you know, did what she did?
Scot
It was when she wrote and scratched all over a lead sheet in the first season, and then stuck in a crack in Caesar's house. It was pretty cool.
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