Westeros

Showtime has posted up a new, lengthy trailer promoting the final season of The Tudors, and it features quite a lot (and quite a lot) of Tamzin Merchant, the actress cast as Daenerys Targaryen in HBO’s Game of Thrones. She plays the ill-fated Katherine Howard, a young woman thrust into the arms of the mercurial Henry VIII. It’s this role that brought her to the attention of George R.R. Martin, according to previous remarks he has made.

Thanks to About Yea High at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum for pointing it out.

Now that Game of Thrones is greenlit, it’s time for fans to pile into the Casting Polls sub-forum. Forum member Smouldering Hound has started a fresh series of threads for suggesting actors to fill the many, many roles that may need filling as the nine additional episodes of the series start shooting in June.

If you’re new to Westeros.org and its forum, it should be noted that David Benioff and Dan Weiss—the executive producers of the series—are members of the forum, and while the pilot was rolling into production they specifically asked fans to pitch suggestions for roles. Our suggestion threads then seemed to have an effect as a number of roles cast were pretty much spot-on to names fans put forward, and hopefully this chance for fans to express their further ideas is going to help them to choose some more, great actors.

Some caveats: if you’re just signing up for the forum, please be patient, I manually approve the queue a couple of times a day (manual approval helps cut down on spam bots quite a bit). Also, when posting, try to focus on British actors—95% of the roles are going to go with actors who are part of the British actors association, as special exemptions are needed for non-Brits.

HBO is covering more ground than I realized. Thanks to a tip from raijap, we have this trademark filing with the U.K.‘s Intellectual Property Office. Very similar, for the most part, to the various U.S. trademark filings covered in previous posts, but presented in a much more readable package.

At a guess, with E.U. harmonization, this probably means these marks are good throughout the E.U. Interestingly, the representative legal firm is Spanish, and the second language of the filing was Spanish. This highlights how increasingly international HBO’s business is becoming.

Continuing the trademarking saga, HBO’s submitted documents on February 22nd for a International Class 009 trademark coverage for Game of Thrones To quote the text, that covers: “games; discs, cartridges and cassettes; downloadable virtual goods for use in online social networking sites; amusement gaming apparatus adapted for use with an external display screen, television receiver or monitor; sunglasses; all the aforementioned goods relating to an ongoing television series”

This doesn’t mean, of course, that HBO is getting into the gaming business (or sunglasses, for that matter, which is really “one of these things does not belong with the others” territory). But it does mean that they’re continuing to cover their bases. Speculatively, this may be opening a way for creating a promotional Flash game, such as Starz!‘s recent Spartacus: Blood and Sand and a number of other shows have had.

Those Northern Ireland ministers are a talkative bunch, to say the least! After recently being quoted discussing the boost the Game of Thrones production can provide to the local economy, the minister Nelson McCausland offers this tidbit:

“...it is expected that each series [British term used for season] will be one year in production, with an overall budget for each series of around £30m.”

That’s about $45 million U.S., or roughly $4.5 million an episode. This is slightly less than the $5 million per episode rumored for Deadwood, and significantly less than the $9 million or so per episode of Rome in the first season (but it was a significant outlier as one of the most expensive television programs, filming in one of the most expensive locations in the world). However, it’s also significantly higher than the budget of many hour-long dramas on network television, and seems to make it more expensive than Showtime’s The Tudors. It should be remembered, however, that certain significant tax breaks, matching funds, and other support were offered to the production if they based themselves in Belfast.

A 1:1 comparison may not work very well, in that light, since the $4.5 million an episode in Belfast may easily equal $5 million or more spent in the U.S. Given that still image, and given the highly talented crew (especially in terms of visual effects), I suspect this is more than sufficient to set some jaw droppings when the show airs.

At the Irish Times, an article discusses HBO’s order of a season of George R.R. Martin’s Game of Thrones, and includes comments from Northern Ireland Deputy First Minister Martin McGuinness. The Northern Irish government estimates that the project could generate as much as £20 million ($30 million) for the local economy.

A brief update, in the course of sharing his happiness at the news of HBO picking up A Game of Thrones: GRRM notes that he’s now at 1311 completed manuscript pages, 50-60 pages up from his last page count, but he’s not done yet. For those wondering, 1311 MS would equal roughly 834 pages, according to the rule of thumb Martin has provided in the past.

This was George R.R. Martin’s initial response to the news, the “happy dance” he promised to perform if the news from HBO was good. And it was. He’s since followed up with thanks for the outpouring of congratulations. He does note that for the most part, David Benioff and Dan Weiss—executive producers of the show—will be closer to any news, as they’ll be working on it on a regular basis while GRRM will stay in Santa Fe.

And in other news? He notes A Dance with Dragons has hit 1311 manuscript pages, which is up another 50 or 60 pages from his last page count, showing good progress. “No, not done yet,” he adds.

This is straight from HBO, and recaps all the terrific actors cast… and yes, includes an amazing picture—our first official still—featuring a brother of the Night’s Watch (played by Bronson Webb as Will) in a snowy forest:

Photo caption: Opening scene, Game of Thrones pilot. Shot on location in Belfast, Northern Ireland.
Photo Credit: Helen Sloan/HBO

Just got in a direct mailing from HBO on this, with the first official still from the show which, well, you can find elsewhere now. But we’ll have it up shortly once we sort out the uploading issues are sorted out. This is, suffice it to say, brilliant news.

Shooting will commence in June. The most notable detail after the pick up, though? Ten episodes, not twelve as originally planned; if I’m not mistaken, GRRM himself at one point was certain it was twelve that was under discussion, but it seems in the intervening time the plan has changed. Whether it’s for budget purposes or they believe it better suits the pacing of the first novel—or both—is up to speculation. This should set fans to reassessing their fannish breakdowns of the first season of this show.

HBO has ordered a season of Game of Thrones! This news comes via James Hibberd at the Live Feed for THR. Congratulations, to the producers, cast, and crew who were able to make this happen, and many thanks to the executives who made the call. It’s been a long journey for fans, for GRRM, David and Dan, and everyone else—it’s good to see them hit the mark.

Onwards to the next year, and the premiere of Game of Thrones!

It looks like Sean Bean—cast as Eddard Stark in HBO’s Game of Thrones adaption which will get word on whether it’ll get a season order this month—has joined the cast of Death Race 2. It sounds like the film is already shooting in South Africa.

Bean can be seen in theatres now in the rule of Zeus in the film Percy Jackson & the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, which has been performing fairly well in the box office, according to Box Office Mojo.

A member of the A Song of Ice and Fire forum at Westeros.org, Wastrel, put into motion a plan to collate favorite genre book lists from members of the forum. What has resulted is a list of 100 books that members of the forum who participated in the voting esteemed most, plus some additional titles for honorable mentions and a list specific to 21st century novels.

It was quite the task to take on, and Wastrel explains his methodology very thoroughly. It’s fascinating to see Gabriel Garcia Marquez rubbing shoulders with Thomas Mallory,  Douglas Adams, and Alan Moore, to name a few on the list.

Over at the Fantasy Hot List, there’s a contest to win one of three copies of George R.R. Martin’s and Gardner Dozois’s Warriors (US, UK) anthology. Among the many stories to be found within? “The Mystery Knight”, the third Dunk and Egg novella set in the Seven Kingdoms.

At “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin indicates that the “Meereenese Knot” may be “fraying”, suggesting he’s made some forward progress in finally resolving one of the central structural problems that have delayed A Dance with Dragons. He’s rather cautious about it, however, which implies that he doesn’t yet know for sure that this will move things forward once he continues pursuing this.