After a long, long search, HBO and the Game of Thrones production have at last found their Mance Rayder, the former ranger who now calls himself King-beyond-the-Wall. According to James Hibberd at EW, Ciarán Hinds has been cast. The Belfast-native actor has a long and distinguished career, playing everything from King Lot in John Boorman’s Excalibur to the proud but tormented Brian de Bois-Guilbert tormented villains in the (very good) Ivanhoe miniseries and on to significant roles in Hollywood films such as The Sum of All Fears, John Carter, and the well-reviewed Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.
But Hinds may be best-known to HBO fans for his gravitas in HBO’s much-missed Rome, the most expensive TV series the cable network has produced. His Julius Caesar may give a taste—just a taste—of the commanding presence he’ll bring to the role of Mance Rayder.
David J. Peterson, creator of the Dothraki language for HBO’s Game of Thrones, has now indirectly revealed that he’s working on creating the Valyrian language for the production thanks to an interview with PRI’s The World. At the 2:05 mark, the interviewer in the piece reads some of the names of languages that Peterson is working on as displayed on his computer, and Valyrian is among them (another one mentioned, Skroth, is the name for the “language” that Peterson invented for the Others as briefly heard in the opening of the first episode).
Thanks to the success and popularity of Game of Thrones, as well as the Na’vi language in James Cameron’s Avatar, a number of TV and film productions are hiring language creators and linguists like Peterson to invent languages. Besides working on the Game of Thrones languages, Peterson’s also working on alien languages for Syfy’s new cross-media series, Defiance.
CORRECTION: Defiance, not Dominion, is the series Peterson is creating languages for.
Over at “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has published his schedule for Bubonicon 44 in Albuquerque, New Mexico between August 24th the 26th. As usual at these convention appearances, there’s a reading ... and this time, the reading’s a surprise: rather than read the extract from The Winds of Winter that Martin has read at his last few appearances, he’s treating everyone to the very first public reading of an extract from The World of Ice and Fire, the setting guide that Linda, George, and I have been working on, on and half, for… well, awhile. ;)
As GRRM’s hinted in earlier “Not a Blog” posts, he’s recently written a few historical pieces for the book, pieces that answer questions that some fans have had about the history of the Seven Kingdoms and the early reign of the Targaryen dynasty from the very start of the series back in 1996. If you’re in the ABQ area and don’t have plans for that Friday, you can get yourself a day pass for $15. And, hey, evenings? Parties are where you’ll find GRRM hanging out. His advice for those going to Worldcon holds for Bubonicon, and will give you a sense of how approachable GRRM can be at an SF convention.
It’s quite remarkable to note that A Dance with Dragons, the fifth novel in the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series, holds the #10 place in the New York Times Hardcover Fiction bestseller list for http://www.nytimes.com/best-sellers-books/2012-08-19/hardcover-fiction/list.html August 19th... and as one notes there, this marks the 52nd week that the novel has been perpetually on the short list for hardcover fiction.
Of course, the mass-market paperbacks continue to do well, with A Game of Thrones presently at #11, with the other novels ranging down to #18. They’ve all been on the bestseller list for a minimum of 44 weeks (for A Feast for Crows), while A Game of Thrones has been on the list for 69 weeks, and seems likely to be hanging on for a good while more.
For those who want to get in early on the ordering and Amazon.com in the US has now posted the pre-order pages for the Game of Thrones Complete 2nd Season DVDs (Pre-order) and Blu-ray (Pre-order). There’s presently no other information available, not even a release date, though HBO’s usual practices suggest that we won’t be seeing it earlier than February or March of 2013.
Some mysterious tweeting a few days ago—from the likes of Simon Pegg, Olympic gold medalist Ryan Lochte, and Maisie Williams—hinted at the following: a terrific “Funny or Die” video featuring all three individuals… plus Sir Patrick Stewart, playing the lead role as a ticket tout on the make. Some very funny stuff, and of course Maisie Williams as “Scraggly Sue” is cute as a button. As to Lochte? He should probably stick to his day job, but have to give him kudos for making the effort. (The video that follows features him as well, and it actually works a bit better with its mockumentary style).
Long in the making, at last we’ve our third and final part of our discussion of prophecies in “A Song of Ice and Fire”, in light of the events of A Dance with Dragons. There are, as you might guess, spoilers through the five novels in the series to date. This particular one actually deals with a very early prophecy—or prophecy-like utterance—from A Game of Thrones. Apologies for any syncing issues, by the way—it looks like our minor editing caused a slight slip in the sound syncing to the video.
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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.