Mike the Productions has posted some interesting news regarding The Skin Trade, the award-winning horror novella by GRRM that they recently acquired rights to.
In the linked press release, they reveal that Filmworks/FXand its president, Ken Locsmandi, are attached to the project. Locsmandi and Filmworks have extensive credits as a visual effects and post-production provider, and have been involved in such films as City of Ember, Apocalypto, and Pete Smalls is Dead (which, coincidentally, stars Peter Dinklage).
In related news, GRRM shared a promotional image Mike the Pike Productions commissioned for the project.
Maureen Ryan of the Chicago Tribune has posted her interview with George R.R. Martin concerning HBO’s Game of Thrones. A lot of interesting things ... and a bit of expected news: Tamzin Merchant has left the production, so the role is definitely being recast. This item is from HBO directly, rather than from GRRM it seems.
The transcript covers a number of topics, not just the HBO production, such as the comic book adaption of Fevre Dream by Avatar Press which came to fruition after they contacted George regarding rights to adapting A Song of Ice and Fire, something he may eventually do (and has been approached by a number of different publishers about) but hasn’t yet decided because he’s not sure it’s really feasible. He also mentions a novel idea he’s had for a long time, inspired by Chicago’s landmark Uptown Theatre, and of course he covers the current situation with A Dance with Dragons. It makes for good reading, especially as it touches upon GRRM’s early career both as a writer and in Hollywood.
Many thanks to Mo Ryan for the head’s up!
As promised, the SSM collection has been updated with a C2E2 transcript and other reports. And as an extra surprise, we have the link to a brand new podcast interview with GRRM at the Dragon Page. GRRM shares some very frank and interesting thoughts on the process of writing the series and the difficulties and delays that have taken place with the last novel and the present one.
A very brief shot of a camera test for HBO’s Game of Thrones can be found in this PDF document from Mediazoo, a Belfast-based green screen facility. In the pictures, you can see what looks to be an ARRICAM Lite, one of the camera systems we’ve previously reported on. From the images, you can see that color swatches and lighting are a part of the tests, presumably as part of an evaluation as to whether the system would be suitable for the production’s needs or perhaps to see what adjustments would be needed to get the look director Thomas MacCarthy wanted.
The most notable of them, of course, is the torch-lit scene in front of a wall. In all probability, this is our first glimpse at the sort of look and lighting we can expect for the scene in Winterfell’s crypt, when Eddard takes King Robert down to pay his respects to Lyanna.
Thanks to raijap for digging this one up.
In the course of an update on various fronts, GRRM notes a little cryptically that he’s spending his spare time with, “Varys, Littlefinger, the Old Bear, Jory Cassel, Septa Mordane, Bronn, and some other old friends.” This baffled us for a moment—at first we thought he meant the script he was writing, but at least one of the characters in that list wouldn’t appear in said episode. Then we thought perhaps he was rereading A Game of Thrones to help him get into the flow of the script.
And then, a moment after, it dawned on us: GRRM has been viewing audition tapes for those various roles. Exciting!
Since the Dothraki news, new items on HBO’s Game of Thrones has been fairly thin on the ground, but here’s a small handful of tidbits for those interested: raijap on Twitter has pointed out that Birds & Animals UK, an animal handling and training service for film and television, lists the series in its credits. They may well be the source of the direwolf pups used in the shoot.
The_Rabbit kept up his busy searches and came across items listing Coral Messam and Kemi Durosinmi among dancers who apparently performed in Game of Thrones. They would have been among the wedding dancers in the Morocco shooting, and seem to be visible in the photos GRRM has shared which we linked previously when we rabbit pointed out a third dancer earlier in the month. A fourth, Kharis George, can be found here, via Winter Is Coming, who notes the Casting Call Pro site lists a number of extras who list their credits as evocatively as “Free Rider” and “Buxom Serving Wench”.
Another extra, David Blair, can be found here as being listed as a “Squire” in Game of Thrones; thanks to Phoenix Torn and Ninepenny at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum for pointing him out. And raijap finds yet another, pointing out a young actress by the name of Laura C. Knowles who’s first professional acting job was on the pilot. Whether she was an extra, or a named extra (Jeyne Poole seems likely, in that case), is a question; so too whether she’ll continue on in the series.
So, dancers and extras and animals is all we have right now. We’re still digging as to whether there’s more to be discovered yet, such as progress on casting.
A guest blogger at Scientific American has published an open letter to HBO, George R.R. Martin, and David J. Peterson in response to the news that HBO’s Game of Thrones would feature a Dothraki language created by Peterson. It’s a fascinating letter, as it asks the production to consider helping science by including certain features that are non-existent or extremely rare in human languages. The blogger, Joshua Hartshome, mentions Klingon as one artificial language whose construction has provided some excellent opportunities for the linguistic sciences, because of it’s unusual word order.
In the comments, Peterson (under his handle Dedavls) offers up a curious feature of Hawaiian—subjects acting as objects and vice versa—which he suggests also exists in Dothraki in some classes.
David J. Peterson and Sai Emrys of the Language Creation Society, through whose auspices the Dothraki language was created for HBO’s Game of Thrones, are the subject of an interview at Tor.com. Quite a lot of interesting details about Peterson’s linguistic training, his approach to creating the Dothraki language, and an exclusive new piece of Dothraki (for the phrase “blood of the dragon”) with an accompanying MP3 file.
David and Sai can both be found at the Dothraki forum at Westeros.org, if you have any additional questions for them.
At his “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin reports that he has acquired a limited supply of the 2009 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, produced by Dabel Brothers Productions with art by Michael Komarck. Rather than sell them, he’s offering them as an incentive for anyone who orders $100 or more in books fromhis Signed Books section of the official website.
Komarck’s art is gorgeous, and relatively few calendars got out there in relation to demand, so these are fine (and very handsome) collectibles. Komarck’s depictions of Jaime, Sansa, Eddard, and more could well be considered definitive.
Mike the Pike Productions have acquired the film rights to George R.R. Martin‘s award-winning urban horror novella, “The Skin Trade”. This follows on the news from September of last year that they had optioned the novella, and suggests confidence in their adaption plans.
Via a message over Twitter, it seems that they’re now sending out the project to potential directors, an important step as they move forward.
George R.R. Martin has returned home from C2E2 and has a post up about the experience. Some interesting pieces of news for fans of his work. Besides the release of Fevre Dream #1 by Avatar Press, he notes that Avatar is still hard at work on adapting his story, In the House of the Worm, script by Wild Cards-collaborator John Jos. Miller and art by Ivan Rodriguez, and they’re still trying to nail down an artist for the comic book adaption of his Bram Stoker Award-winning novella, “The Skin Trade”; Daniel Abraham has already written the adaption.
The above items were all previously known, more or less, however. For something completely new, GRRM announces that IDW has acquired the rights to producing a miniseries based on his science fiction television pilot from the early 90’s, Doorways. If it does well, there’s the potential for it to go forward for a longer period of time, as six back-up scripts were readied, including one written by GRRM himself. And if it takes off? Original stories are a definite possibility. As Martin notes, very few people have seen the pilot, which ended up released on video in Europe at one point but which was never aired in the U.S., so this is a fine chance to see what his show—which some believe inspired Fox’s Sliders from the same period—could have been like.
In other news, some half a dozen publishers met with Martin over the weekend to discuss the possibility of adapting “A Song of Ice and Fire” to comics. He’s uncertain of approving this still, but some formal proposals may follow on from these meetings and he’ll consider it. He cautions, though, that these comics would then be based on the novels, and not be an adaption of the HBO series or its scripts, due to separation of rights.
Finally, GRRM notes that he had a good lunch with Maureen Ryan, TV writer for the Chicago Tribune (and unabashed Ice and Fire fan), the setting for an interview which Ryan has teased with a remark from GRRM regarding the difficulties the production team will face in turning his expansive vision—a reaction to his days in Hollywood, when budget and time constraints kept scaling down what he wanted to do—into televised drama with budget and time constraints. The interview should be published later this week or early next.
We’ll shortly have a full report on his Q&A session in the So Spake Martin collection.
Songs of the Dying Earth, the Jack Vance tribute anthology edited by George R.R. Martin and Gardner Dozois, was on the short list of this year’s Locus Awards. Congratulations to them, and the authors involved! Neil Gaiman‘s story in the anthology, “An Invocation of Incuriosity”, was separately nominated in the short story category.
Mr. Dozois has two other anthologies on the nomination list and is also a nominee as best editor, while Jack Vance himself sees his memoir, This is Me, Jack Vance! (a book which I recommend for fans of Vance, as it’s filled to the brim with his musing style and contains a number of entertaining anecdotes from across his long life), nominated in the Non-Fiction/Art book category. We also note the name of John Picacio among those nominated in the best artist category; Picacio will be illustrating the 2012 A Song of Ice and Fire Calendar, as we’ve previously reported.
The winners will be announced at the Science Fiction Awards Weekend, June 25-27, in Seattle.
There’s a production listing for HBO’s Game of Thrones, posted March 16th and last revised April 14th, which gives the filming locations of the production as Northern Ireland and Morocco, with a “late June” start. From what I can gather, this website accepts submissions from productions to list relevant information concerning their productions for those who may what to inquire about employment, hiring of equipment, and so on. The sample listings suggest that among the things they list behind their subscription wall are production office addresses and phone numbers.
The main point of interest here is the mention of Morocco. On March 5th, GRRM indicated that a return to Morocco (and Scotland) were possibilities that were yet to be decided on. While we can’t say for certain that this listing is 100% official, if it is official, it seems that the production has decided to go ahead with filming in Morocco after all. Further, again if it’s taken to be 100% official, it seems the production has decided to skip further filming in Scotland, perhaps due to expense or due to the difficulty of keeping shooting locations closed to the public, an issue which we were told bothered the production.
Going back to Morocco, to what degree was the decision to go back motivated by the ongoing casting for Daenerys? While we continue to caution against assuming that Tamzin Merchant, who played the role in the pilot, is definitely out, with each passing day it seems likelier and likelier—they’ll need to be certain of Daenerys by late May at the latest, we think, to give an actress and production time to start readying for her part. If Merchant is replaced, reshooting will have to be extensive since she’s present in every single scene in Pentos according to reports, and hence ... Morocco.
Or maybe not. Maybe they’ve decided Morocco offers too many useful locations for Daenerys’s part of the story, and we’ll be seeing Tamzin Merchant riding the silver across the arid Moroccan landscape, such as in episode 8, written by George R.R. Martin, where he’s confirmed that there’ll be at least one scene featuring the character.
We’ll report further when we have more information. Hat tip to The Rabbit01 for the pointer to My Entertainment World’s listing.
We have a fresh report on George R. R. Martin’s remarks while at C2E2 in Chicago, courtesy of Trebla, at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum. There’s some spoilerish material for A Dance with Dragons and “The Mystery Knight”, so beware.
For those who just want the news relating to HBO’s Game of Thrones, see the extended section. Mild spoilers for the TV show follow.
This may be of interest to expectant fans of HBO’s Game of Thrones. Chris Albrecht, head of HBO when the channel optioned George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series and now head of Starz, has revealed that his cable network is going to focus its development on historical/fantasy-flavored productions for the time being, according to this Variety report from the MIP TV exhibition at Cannes (familiar to GoT followers as the location where international broadcasting rights for Game of Thrones would first be negotiated).
Starz has already had a great deal of success with Spartacus: Blood and Sand, so much so that the delay in production in season 2 (due to lead Andy Whitfield’s ongoing treatment for a recently discovered non-Hodgkins lymphoma) has them considering a spin-off miniseries to fill time. They also recently acquired broadcast rights to Pillars of the Earth, a big-budget miniseries set in 12th century England based on Ken Follett’s international bestselling novel, and are bringing Arthurian romance-adventure Camelot into production.
This trend appears to be continuing, with Albrecht revealing that Starz is now also developing a mini-series titled William the Conqueror, based on the life of the Norman duke (known in his earlier days as William the Bastard) who would become King of England. There’s a choice quote from Albrecht as well: “The business model is going to be: If it’s got a sword, we want it,” Albrecht joked. “But (picking up) a good contemporary or futuristic piece right now might not be bad.” As to his former home, he calls HBO “kind of a colossus” as far as original programming goes, but he hopes Starz will carve out a niche as “entertaining”, suggesting this strategy is aimed at pleasing the crowds more than at pleasing critics.
What’s interesting about it is that Albrecht’s instincts seem to have been pretty solid, and his instincts have been indicating that there’s a definite place for historical/historical-fantasy original drama on cable. Others seem to agree, given Showtime’s bringing The Tudors to a close only to be readying Borgias to replace it as a sumptuous historical drama, and many more are making that very same bet with shows such as “The Medici” and “Pharoh” being produced internationally. Game of Thrones is the most clearly fantastical of the lot (it remains to be seen whether Camelot will take a more historical or fanciful approach), and certainly one of the highest-budgetted, so it may be argued that HBO’s taking the largest risk into unknown territory. Up to now, fantasy epics on television have been more along the lines of Xena than The Lord of the Rings.
It looks like fans of pre-Modern costume dramas are going to have a feast to choose from later this year and through next. Will all the bets on these costume dramas pan out? 2011 will let us know.