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GRRM confirms talks about Game of Thrones prequel for HBO

By February 14th, 20131 Response

Last week, news spread that George R.R. Martin, author of A Song of Ice and Fire, signed a new two-year contract with HBO, including his continued participation in their ASOIAF adaptation, Game of Thrones and the development of new projects. On February 10th, in response to a question from a fan on his personal blog, Martin confirmed details about those ‘projects,’ including a potential prequel series to Game of Thrones.

Tuf would be fun. Dunk and Egg are being discussed. Robert’s Rebellion is part of Ice & Fire, won’t be a separate series. Sandkings was done by the OUTER LIMITS; I retain feature film rights, but television rights are gone.

While he speculates about his other properties, he admits specifically that discussion has taken place regarding Dunk and Egg, the heroes of his A Song of Ice and Fire off-shoot novella series. They would be a fun concept for a show, but I wonder if there is proper mass appeal for two characters that most fans of the series likely don’t even know exist. As he says, Robert’s Rebellion would be perfect, but nearly as big a production as Game of Thrones itself, and it’s integrally tied to the events in the series and might be redundant by the time the series/show ends. Non-A Song of Ice and Fire properties is an interesting idea, but, again, I wonder about the mass appeal. Me? I’m curious where the rights to the Wild Cards series rest.

Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell coming to BBC

By December 4th, 20124 Responses
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke

Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell by Susanna Clarke, Art by Sidharth Chaturvedi

There is nothing in the world so easy to explain as failure – it is, after all, what everybody does all the time.

If HBO hasn’t already won over the Fantasy crowd with its award-winning adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, True Blood, based on Charlaine Harris’ popular Sookie Stackhouse series, and upcoming adaptation of American Gods by Neil Gaiman, they’re looking at some potential competition from the BBC, which recently announced the acquisition of Susanna Clarke’s beautiful, bloated and baroque Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell.

Of the acquisition, the BBC says:

[The series is] based on the bestselling novel by Susanna Clarke and adapted by Peter Harness. Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell is set during the Napoleonic Wars in an England where magic once existed and is about to return.

Jonathan Strange And Mr Norrell is produced by Cuba, the production arm of leading literary and talent agency Curtis Brown in association with Feel Film and Farmoor.

Toby Haynes directs, Nick Hirschkorn will produce with Nick Marston, Justin Thomson-Glover and Patrick Irwin are executive producing. Matthew Read is the Executive Producer for the BBC.

Cuba is also the production company behind BAFTA-winning Boy A and critically acclaimed Broken.

So, not much, beside a bunch of names which most non-British fans probably won’t recognize, but it appears to be a project worth keeping an eye on. I attempted to reading Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell several years ago, when it was first released, and found it bland and almost impenetrable and didn’t finish it; but it’s always been on my bucket list, as my tastes have evolved significantly since then and I expect I could better appreciate Clarke’s work nowadays. This television series might be just the kick in the pants I’m looking for.

Neil Gaiman is writing an American Gods pilot for HBO

By November 29th, 20127 Responses
American Gods by Neil Gaiman

So, uh, this is happening:

Of course, a pilot is just a pilot, and doesn’t necessarily mean that the HBO adaptation of American Gods is any closer to being greenlit than it was last week, or last month, but it’s encouraging to know that Gaiman is so heavily involved. I guess this answers early questions about Gaiman’s involvement in the series.

GRRM tried to talk HBO out of Game of Thrones

By October 3rd, 20128 Responses
My thoughts on GAME OF THRONES

Author George R. R. Martin tried desperately to talk HBO out of making a TV show out of his epic “Game of Thrones” books — for fear that a flop would kill his popular series, according to a new book.

In the preface to a new book, Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones, Martin recalls telling the shows future producers, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff that ‘[i]t’s too big. It’s too complicated. It’s too expensive,’ and that ‘Hollywood Boulevard is lined with the skulls and bleached bones.’ Continue reading

My early thoughts on the Game of Thrones RPG

By May 25th, 2012Leave a response

Game of Thrones RPG
Okay, I’ll admit it, I first loaded up Game of Thrones, a full-on Dragon Age-style RPG developed by Canadian/French developer Cyanide Entertainment, with some hesitancy. Like many Fantasy fans, I consider Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire to be a pre-eminent work of Fantasy and place it among my very favourite pieces of fiction, regardless of medium. Though there is recent precedent for the adaptation of the series into other formats (particularily HBO’s television series and the Graphic Novel, adapted in part my Daniel Abraham), videogames have always been a difficult transition due to the non-linear style of storytelling that they often employ. Added to this, developer Cyanide Studio doesn’t exactly have the strongest back library of games and their previous attempt at a Game of Thrones videogame, A Game of Thrones: Genesis was poorly received (so much so that the publisher of Game of Thrones, Atlus, very clearly points out in the press material that this game was developed by an entirely different team at Cyanide!)

*yawn*

So, then, I booted up my PS3, eager but also weary of what I’d find. First impression? A twenty-plus minute mandatory install to my PS3′s harddrive. No flavour text or history to read through, no stirring music or pretty screenshots. Just twenty-plus minutes of a bar slowly filling up.

The graphics are pretty dire. While the art direction is decent at times (if a little over-the-top for Martin’s generally reserved world), the first environment (Castle Black) is bland and lifeless, textures are poor, the characters animate awkwardly, and the faces are almost as bad as an Elder Scrolls game. Further, thought this might be a PS3 issue, which has always Framerate is junky and there’s a noticeable amount of tearing.
Continue reading