Goodreads, the massive social book site, is running their annual Choice Awards, and wouldn’t you know it? A Dance with Dragons is on the shortlist, not just in Best Fantasy but also the overall Favorite Book of 2011 category. Many other fine works are on both lists, so checking it out (and voting!) is certainly a good idea if you want to support your favorite books of the last year.
As an aside, GRRM’s assistant Ty Franck and writer Daniel Abraham, who together write as James S.A. Corey, are also up for an award in the Best Science Fiction category with the novel Leviathan Wakes. Congratulations to the both of them—it’s well-deserved for a book that’s been quite well reviewed indeed.
As previously reported, the publishers of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire in the UK, Voyager, have finally gotten into a position where they can re-release the first four novels of the series in matching hard-covers. This is the first time that the novels have been made available in hardcover since their initial releases (my understanding is that the first edition of the A Game of Thrones hardcover is very valuable, in part due to this fact).
You can order A Game of Thrones and A Clash of Kings presently, with A Storm of Swords (in one volume, no less!) and A Feast for Crows due in December.
We’ve previously reported on the hints and news related to various games in production based on HBO’s Game of Thrones, but some clear details have finally come out thanks to this report from USA Today.
Thanks to a tweet from HBO UK, we realized that quite a few things have been added to the HBO Store in the last weeks, items prominently featured on our store page for fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Some hoodies have turned up—I guess this is the right season for them—and there’s quite a few collectables, from house posters to shot glasses(!) and now what strikes me as the coolest of them all, a dragon egg paperweight that looks rather cool.
HBO’s finally listing the Bluray and DVD as well, though without any box art or release information. We’ll be keeping an eye on that, to say the least. (And before you ask, the US HBO Store remains US-only so far—sorry!)
We’ve no idea whether any will actually show up on camera, but according to production assistant (and Making Game of Thrones writer) Cat Taylor, there’ll be a number of Game of Thrones actors at the MTV European Music Awards. The EMAs don’t seem to be airing in the U.S., from what I can see, but the red (actually, rather more pink) carpet pre-show is airing right now, and apparently Alfie Allen and Oona Chaplin were on the carpet a bit ago; Chaplin had recently tweeted that she was out shopping for clothes for the event, in fact.
Just yesterday, several of the young actors—Aimee Richardson (Myrcella Baratheon), Isaac Hempstead-Wright (Bran Stark), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), and Art Parkinson (Rickon Stark) tweeted that they were hanging out with members of Snow Patrol (who happen to hail from Northern Ireland), as apparently they shared a hotel with the actors. Apparently, quite a few other performers were staying at the hotel, as the kids tweeted that they were spotting more stars.
Besides their brush with Snow Patrol and other musicians, one wonders if there’ll be some sort of official presence of actors—perhaps as presenters?—during the EMAs. We’ll just have to wait and see.
The latest update at HBO’s Making Game of Thrones site isn’t contemporaneous—the filming it’s referring to happened back in September or early October—but it’s a nice look into the filming of the penultimate episode, “Blackwater”, directed by Neil Marshall and scripted by George R.R. Martin.
Via Bleeding Cool, we’ve learned that Marvel Comics—famously stingy with its back catalog of trades, apparently due to Scrooge-like marching orders from CEO Isaac Perlmutter—is letting a large catalog of trade paperbacks go out of print. That means that for the foreseeable future, no more trades will be in print, limiting supply to what’s currently out there.
On the list of titles to go OOP? The Hedge Knight II: Sworn Sword, the Ben Avery and Mike S. Miller adaptation of Martin’s second Dunk & Egg novella, “The Sworn Sword”. As Bleeding Cool notes, Marvel’s habit of letting titles go out of print means that in many cases, the titles may eventually sell for many times the original retail price… so now may be a good time to get a hold of the comic, if you’re at all interested. “As New” copies of the first graphic novel, which is out of print, are being listed starting from $95, so who knows where this book will go after major resellers run out of copies. With increasing interest in Martin’s work thanks to the TV show, and the occasional fan hope that the Dunk & Egg stories might end up being optioned by HBO as between-season miniseries or HBO Go-exclusive original content, it’s probably a good time to buy.
The word’s been getting aroundthat the Northern Irish leg of filming for the second season of HBO’s Game of Thrones will wrap around November 18th, which is an earlier wrap date than last year. All in all, it sounds like filming has largely gone off without a hitch, excluding the gale that led to some minor injuries and delayed filming of scenes involving Renly Baratheon and his camp until a later date.
Subterranean Press reports that they’ll begin taking pre-orders of A Dance with Dragons from next week. Those who’ve purchased A Feast for Crows previously had first shot at pre-ordering, and it looks like “a handful” of the deluxe limited lettered editions and about 80 of the numbered editions remain. Dance‘s art comes by way of artist Marc Fishman, who has continued to post illustrations and paintings from the book to his gallery (including one as recently as yesterday); note that the illustrations can be rather spoilerish, and in some cases may be considered marginally not safe for work.
According to Subterranean, they’ll hold a lottery for the remaining lettered editions, as demand will certainly outstrip supply. As a further update, it looks like some more book design work is left, plus a final proof, and then it’s off to the printers. With that, they’ll start turning their eyes towards their own limited edition of A Game of Thrones to be illustrated by Ted Nasmith.
During the weekend, news broke that SyFy Films (a joint venture of the SyFy Channel and Universal Studios) and had optioned theatrical and television rights to Wild Cards, the original shared-world superhero series concocted by George R.R. Martin and the Wild Cards Consortium of writers. We’ve done some digging, and we have a handful of additional details to share.
According to a press release, the second issue of Dynamite‘s George R.R. Martin’s A Game of Thrones has sold out and has immediately gone into a second printing. This repeats the feat of the first issue, and given anedoctal reports, shows the high level of interest in the series.
Comic book fans and store owners have both noted via Twitter and Facebook that shops have been selling out, leaving some fans without any copies, so it looks like Dynamite has its work cut out for it when it comes to matching supply to demand. A few copies of various variant overs can be found, marked as high as $75, which either shows just how sought-after the comics are… or, perhaps, how avaracious comic book sellers can be; only time will tell!
For those who’d rather not bother with single issues, Bantam will be packaging the first six issues into the first volume of a graphic novel adaptation—presently the first novel is intended to be covered in twenty four issues, so that’ll be four collections over approximately two years.
G4, the gaming television channel, has jumped on-board with Game of Thrones mania. On Monday, their X-Play program featured a comedic spoof of the show, using various popular video game characters (e.g. Link and Zelda—or maybe his sister Aryll?—as incestuous Lannister-types). If you’re a fan of such spoofs, and somewhat broad comedy, it’s worth a watch.
(Favorite bit? The delivery of a message… by an Angry Bird.)
We’ve previously covered Mike the Pike Productions, who are developing George R.R. Martin‘s award-winning horror novella, “The Skin Trade” (found in Dreamsongs Volume 2, which also contains the first Dunk & Egg novella “The Hedge Knight”, set in Westeros, and many other excellent stories) for film. Now they’ve decided to ratchet up the visibility of the project by launching an official site.
The site offers hints as to the story and the production team currently in place, including noting that Filmworks FX—a post-production company that’s worked on Red Riding Hood, Knight and Day, The Tourist, and other Hollywood film projects—is on-board to handled VFX and is intimately involved at an unusually early stage in development.
Besides the official website, Mike the Pike Productions have also launched a Facebook Page—named Blackstone Manor, after a key location in the novella—which features news, updates, and the occasional query to readers. Right now, the page asks fans who they’d like to see direct The Skin Trade, and I’ve chimed in with British director Neil Marshall, who recently wrapped up filming on the penultimate episode of HBO’s Game of Thrones... and who first rose to the attention of horror fans thanks to his cult classic, Dog Soldiers.
The Hollywood Reporter exclusively reveals that Wild Cards had been optioned for development by Syfy Films—the theatrical division of the Syfy channel—and Universal Studios, with the screenplay set to be handled by there-from-the-start author Melinda Snodgrass, who (like GRRM) has TV writing experience.
We’ve been waiting for the first details about the Iceland leg of the filming of Game of Thrones, where scenes beyond the Wall will be shot… and it looks like we’ve finally got them.