Two weeks ago, we reported that George R.R. Martin was being honored with a World Fantasy Lifetime Achievement Award, shared with British fantasy author Alan Garner. And now we’ve learned that on the final ballot has been released, and Martin’s A Dance with Dragons, fifth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, is nominated in the Best Novel category!
Back in March, we reported the fact that HBO, in collaboration with Chronicle Books, was publishing Inside HBO’s Game of Thrones (Pre-order: Amazon US, Amazon UK) which would provide an in-depth, insider’s view (thanks in part to being written by series writer and story editor Bryan Cogman) into the making of the series.
Now, more previews have appeared since we provided the very first look into the book back in May.
While production has been carrying on at a good pace—I’ve heard everything’s pretty much proceeding to schedule—there has been little tidbits coming, here and there, from Northern Ireland locals who’ve spotted filming ... or, better yet, have managed to get a few photos in. The most interesting photos relate to a much-missed location from prior seasons of Game of Thrones: Riverrun, the seat of House Tully. Other than a very brief mention at the end of season 2, Riverrun has largely been out of the picture… but not this year, not with the casting of Edmure and Brynden Tully.
Northern Ireland Screen, the corporate body tasked with helping to encourage film and television production in Northern Ireland, has regular board meetings that occasionally reveal little tidbits about HBO’s Game of Thrones. There’s generally a three month lag, give or take, between these meetings and their minutes being posted, so the details of this March 13th (PDF file) meeting are slightly out of date, with the CEO’s confidence that negotiations for season 3 will be successful—they were, with the production well under way in Northern Ireland—and so on.
However, it’s interesting to note this bit:
Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post has discovered, in the course of an interview, that English actor Dominic West—perhaps best known for his role as McNulty in the critically acclaimed The Wire, and currently heading up the BBC’s The Hour—was offered a part on HBO’s Game of Thrones... a part which he passed up because, apparently, it involved being in Iceland for six months (or so he recalls—in fact, the production will be there for about six weeks) and that it was a prominent role.
Ryan speculates a number of possibilities, but we think her first guess—that he was offered the part of Mance Rayder, the former ranger of the Night’s Watch who has proclaimed himself King beyond the Wall—is pretty much spot on. West would have been fairly perfect for the part, it must be said, but it seems that’s not meant to be. As we know from recent remarks, the role of Mance Rayder was still in casting just two weeks ago.
George R.R. Martin may be wrapping up his visit to Spain in the next day or so, but he has been busy with interviews and press conferences and Q&A’s. We’ve been collecting them over at the So Spake Martin collection, but we do have too make a particular note about this interview—translated from the Spanish, and sent to us by Jon Nieve of the leading Spanish fan site for A Song of Ice Fire, Asshai.com. It’s heavy on spoilers for A Dance with Dragons, and it touches on quite a few topics that hardcore fans will doubtless find very, very interesting indeed.
Many thanks to Jon and the fans at Asshai for coming up with these great questions and for letting us share the article at the SSM collection!
Thanks to a head’s up from Maureen Ryan of the Huffington Post, we now know that director Michelle MacLaren—who’s won plaudits, and well-deserved ones, for her work as a producer and director on Breaking Bad—will be directing episodes 7 and 8 of the third season of Game of Thrones, and she’ll start lensing the series “soon”.
Although the chances of Game of Thrones winning the Best Drama Emmy this year is virtually nil, it’s always an honor to be nominated… but even more of an honor to win something on occasion, as the show did last night when the Television Critics Association Awards were announced. As reported by Entertainment Weekly, Game of Thrones took Program of the Year. It beat out other likely candidates, including Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Homeland, and Downton Abbey which is pretty much the same nomination slate as at the Emmys.
Thanks to the Kosmopolis International Literature Fest, George R.R. Martin is involved in a Q&A in Barcelona, and it’s being live streamed. Apparently A Dance with Dragons is part of the focus on the conversation, so there may be spoilers for that novel. Also, bear in mind that Martin’s answers are translated and repeated in Spanish, so it takes a bit longer to get from one question to the next. Once a video archive is available, we’ll link it, just as we have been with others of Martin’s appearances in Spain via the So Spake Martin collection:
It’s been a week since the news that actor Iwan Rheon (best known for his role in the first three series of the BAFTA Award-winning Misfits) looks to have scored a role in Game of Thrones, but it wasn’t officially confirmed… until now, in any case, as HBO indicates the following:
Yes, we can confirm that Iwan Rheon will be part of the Game of Thrones cast for season 3. He will be playing the part of BOY.
So, there you have it. It’ll be interesting to see him entering the mix on the show, as he’s a very promising young actor.
Via GoldDerby, it looks like our collective head-scratching over the Best Drama submission choices made by HBO for the Emmy Awards must have been echoed somewhere in the offices of the Game of Thrones production… because, in a somewhat unusual step, HBO has revised the episodes it is submitting for consideration in the Best Drama Category:
Peter Dinklage has also adjusted his episode of choice to “Blackwater”. All in all, that’s obviously a stronger slate for the Emmy voters to look at. While the show is, realistically, out contention for Best Drama, some would argue that Dinklage’s revised choice improves his chances of repeating his win from last year (although, as we previously noted, no supporting actor has won back-to-back victories in the last 16 years, so the odds are against him repeating.)
One of the things we’ve learned since the Emmy nominations were announced is that the drama series nomination has a particular process (see the last paragraph), namely that three pairs of episodes are selected, and these sets are randomly distributed among the voters. It left us pondering which pairs of episodes HBO had sent out…
This was just announced today: the World Fantasy Convention has announced that this year’s World Fantasy Award for Lifetime Achievementwill go to George R.R. Martin and (the very excellent) Alan Garner. It’s an award that’s been given to a number of notable writers in the past, including Terry Pratchett, Jane Yolen, Peter Beagle, Urusula K. LeGuin, and more.
More information about the recipients can be found at the World Fantasy Awards site.
Garner is one of the writers Martin has admired, so it’s particularly nice that they are receiving the award in the same year. In fact, Martin has a noble house named after the British author, with the arms referencing his enigmatic, unforgettable novel The Owl Service (Order: Amazon US, Amazon UK).
(Thanks to @olafkeith for noting this to us.)
For those who are fans of Misfits, the British comedy-drama about a group of delinquents who manifest super powers (Michelle Fairley had a role in its first season), a bit of interesting news cropped up over night: actor Iwan Rheon, who played the moody, shy Simon Bellamy (a character who was one of the most complex storylines in the series, and one that ended with series 3—he won’t be returning for the 4th), has an updated CV —updated within the last two weeks, in fact—noting himself as having a role in Game of Thrones.
And what role does the CV reveal for him?
In our latest entry in our video series, I discuss a minor “mystery”. It’s not one that we dealt with in our post-A Dance with Dragons little mysteries video because, well, we didn’t think it’s a mystery. But we’ve had enough people ask about it on the A Song of Ice and Fire forum that Sean T. Collins’ suggestion that we tackle it made sense. For those who already knew the answer, I do discuss some related topics that may be of interest.
It ought to go without saying, but this contains spoilers for A Dance with Dragons:
Now, a couple of notes. Firstly, Linda and I are on a long (working) vacation, and while we could in theory record more videos, our internet connection out here in the far reaches of Scandinavia is shaky enough that it would take issues to get them uploaded (and that’s if it’d be stable enough to allow a long video upload). So, probably no new videos until August. Secondly, some sort of Youtube behind-the-scenes code adjustments have made it that I can’t directly reply to any comments (and there’s been many good ones in the last week), so I’m sorry to say that until that’s resolved, I won’t be able to answer any questions offered in comments. But keep them coming! Once it gets fixed, I’ll try to catch up with everything.