George RR Martin on HBO
I'm pretty excited about the news that George RR Martin's fantasy series "A Song of Ice and Fire" is being made into an HBO series along the lines of one of my favorite TV series, Rome.
The best thing is that I'd already imagined something like this might happen, because as Martin says on his website, any attempt to make the series into a movie would have forced them to cut out eighty percent of the characters and plotlines. In some ways the books have been written like a TV series (which makes sense, given Martin's previous experience with TV), with one big world created, which contains numerous seperate plotlines, revolving around various characters who frequently never meet. You can't do that in films -- aside from the simple fact that there's not enough screen time in movies to portray all this stuff, all the characters must revolve around a central plotline for the film to make sense (unless you're making avant guard stuff, which this clearly isn't). So I'd already had the thought 'wouldn't it be cool if they made it into a TV series instead?' And the best TV series are at HBO.
A few things will be interesting to observe in development... like what the budget is. There are some scenes that will need to be cut back, of course -- Rome gets around the big battle scenes by largely skipping them, but I'm not sure you can do that in 'Ice and Fire'. Certainly they'll have to cut back a bit though. Seeing what they do for casting is always fun. Also, filming in Europe, or New Zealand? I'd guess NZ has better landscapes, and is cheaper... but you really need castles for 'Ice and Fire', so much of it takes place in castles. And that means Europe, probably France. The series is really based on feudal French culture anyway.
The really interesting thing will be to see if it's possible to bring fantasy, on TV, to a large audience. Rome isn't fantasy, but it tends to appeal to a similar audience, and it's apparently being cancelled after two seasons. Very expensive seasons, it's true, but I'm not sure 'Ice and Fire' will be much cheaper.
The best thing is that I'd already imagined something like this might happen, because as Martin says on his website, any attempt to make the series into a movie would have forced them to cut out eighty percent of the characters and plotlines. In some ways the books have been written like a TV series (which makes sense, given Martin's previous experience with TV), with one big world created, which contains numerous seperate plotlines, revolving around various characters who frequently never meet. You can't do that in films -- aside from the simple fact that there's not enough screen time in movies to portray all this stuff, all the characters must revolve around a central plotline for the film to make sense (unless you're making avant guard stuff, which this clearly isn't). So I'd already had the thought 'wouldn't it be cool if they made it into a TV series instead?' And the best TV series are at HBO.
A few things will be interesting to observe in development... like what the budget is. There are some scenes that will need to be cut back, of course -- Rome gets around the big battle scenes by largely skipping them, but I'm not sure you can do that in 'Ice and Fire'. Certainly they'll have to cut back a bit though. Seeing what they do for casting is always fun. Also, filming in Europe, or New Zealand? I'd guess NZ has better landscapes, and is cheaper... but you really need castles for 'Ice and Fire', so much of it takes place in castles. And that means Europe, probably France. The series is really based on feudal French culture anyway.
The really interesting thing will be to see if it's possible to bring fantasy, on TV, to a large audience. Rome isn't fantasy, but it tends to appeal to a similar audience, and it's apparently being cancelled after two seasons. Very expensive seasons, it's true, but I'm not sure 'Ice and Fire' will be much cheaper.
2 Comments:
I understand Rome didn't play well in the UK, and that may be why it fell in favor with its European financing. It's one of my top shows on tv, and I'm crushed it's not continuing, but very much looking forward to this!
I'd be interested to know if it played well at all in Italy, if the Italians could get over all these Romans speaking English. But then, I guess English isn't much further from Latin than Italian... But still, I would have thought other European markets would have made up for England's disinterest.
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