If you're a fan of George R.R. Martin's amazing fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire, news broke today that'll give you a total geek-gasm. HBO has acquired the rights to turn the books into a television series.HBO is the perfect place -- really, the only place -- the Martin books could have ended up. The story is simply too vast (and not yet finished) to be contained in any reasonable number of movies. The cast of characters is too large for conventional film executives to allow in a movie. The violence and sex portrayed in the series are too strong to air on broadcast television, and too crucial to the atmosphere of the books to be cut.
Perhaps best of all in this announcement is the pressure this will put on George R.R. Martin to actually finish the series. The television series plan is for each season to portray one book. At the pace Martin has been releasing them, the television series would overtake him before the story was done -- even if the series doesn't actually start up until 2008. So the man had better get cracking!
I must admit, there is a little trepidation in the back of my mind, though, that HBO might pull a Carnivale and cut down the series before the entire story is told. I'll just have to hope that there are lots of geeks like me who will put the ratings through the roof and keep the series going the full seven years. Which is not unreasonable -- the ratings standards are a bit lower on HBO than they are on the big networks.
5 comments:
Wow. This is probably the only thing that would get me to subscribe to HBO. I've been thinking how I'd love to see the series as movies, but knew how impossible that would be. But a TV series... that's doable. I can hardly wait.
I, for one, will subscribe to HBO when this happens. That's not ratings, that's cash money, and I'm sure I'm not the only one.
I didn't think such an announcement could drop my jaw, but that's exactly what happened when I came across it on Variety's website. I'm giddy with the joy of a 6-year old with rich parents on XMas morning :P
To the previous posters, you're doing yourself wrong by not already subscribing to HBO. Between The Wire, Deadwood, Rome, et al, their original seriesare the best stuff on TV, bar none.
I agree with the previous poster about HBO...their comedies don't do much for me, but the three he mentioned are absolotely must see for me. I'm hoping this adaptation lives up to HBO's standards, not just the book's...seem like it has two things trying to put the quality up though, which can't be a bad thing, right?
Right there with all y'all. Currently not a subscriber, but will do my part to keep the ratings and cash flow to HBO up for this.
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