According to reports from fans of the series, such as the one here, casting is currently being carried out for Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, and Robb Stark. It seems that fresh faces are being sought for these particular roles which feature the younger characters, and the casting process may take a number of weeks before any actors are selected.
The Wiki of Ice and Fire is presently the largest English-language wiki dedicated to George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, with hundreds of articles in some stage of development. There is, however, room for much more work! To help facilitate making it as useful as possible, we’ve returned to trying to stay on top of the MediaWiki release cycle by upgrading to the latest stable release (1.14). We have also enabled uploading of images, although these must be (at this time) under terms compatible with the GFDL license (this means images must be fair use, public domain, or explicitly licensed for any and all use, including commercial use; traditionally copyright-protected images are not valid).
As Wikipedia has recently determined it will be shifting to the Creative Commons license, we will be examining doing the same to ease migration of articles from Wikipedia to the wiki. We’re also examining keeping texts as GFDL/Creative Commons but allowing more scope for images that aren’t licensed for commercial use to be a part of the wiki. Finally, we’re examining available Mediawiki extensions to make the wiki more useful. Should fans of the series be interested in contributing to the wiki, all they need is a membership at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum. If you’ve ideas, suggestions, prior experience with wikis (especially template creation and management), or just some time and interest in helping provide and edit content, we’ll be happy to have you as a member of the community!
Green Ronin has now published their Narrator’s Kit for their A Song of Ice and Fire roleplaying game. The kit includes a full color poster map of the Seven Kingdoms, as well as other useful aids for narrators who run gaming sessions.
George R. R. Martin’s official website has been been updated with news concerning Songs of the Dying Earth—the Jack Vance tribute anthology he and Gardner Dozois have edited, with many notable authors contributing stories—being sent to the printers. New works have been included in the Signed Books page as well.
Valyrian Steel has a new update. They discuss the fact that their prototype for Needle, Arya Stark’s sword, is currently being reviewed for approval by George R.R. Martin. Once they secure his approval, they’ll be able to go into production. They also note that they are extending their sale of their replica of Jon Snow’s sword, Longclaw, that was introduced in the first novel in the series, A Game of Thrones. The price of Longclaw has been reduced by $40 while extra stock remains.
The following is the official press release from Cyanide concerning the acquisition of the A Song of Ice and Fire PC and video game license. We hope to have some more information soon.
George R. R. Martin’s official website has been been updated with news items concerning the republication of the first three books in the Wild Cards series (including an extended Wild Cards with three additional stories) and the release of Wild Cards and A Song of Ice and Fire RPG material from Green Ronin. In addition, GRRM has posted on his Not a Blog about a new entry in the Wild Cards series, titled Fort Freak.
Via an official press release, Cyanide announces that they have acquired the PC and console rights to developing a video game based on George R.R. Martin’s bestselling A Song of Ice and Fire series. There is no other information concerning what genre the game will be a part of at this time.
Over at the A Song of Ice and Fire forum, Dan Weiss and David Benioff surface to remark on the recent announcement concerning Peter Dinklage and Tom McCarthy joining the production. They note that McCarthy was their very first choice for director, and that Dinklage was always their first choice for Tyrion. They ask members of the forum to continue discussing casting suggestions, with a new caveat: given the production’s location in Northern Ireland, almost all roles are likely to be filled with actors from the U.K.
The A Song of Ice and Fire forum was brought down earlier today by what we suspect is a flood of spam PM messages; certainly, the crash of the board seems to closely coincide with the sending out of these messages. We have contacted our server admin about it, but it may be some time before she’ll be free to get things up and running again. If the spam flood is the cause, I have to offer an apology, as I’ve delayed putting in a patch to prevent PM spam flooding out of some laziness on my part (my eternal failing). We’ll see about getting that in place when we’ve a bit of time to figure out how to do so.
The Hollywood Reporter has broken the news that Peter Dinklage has been cast as Tyrion Lannister for HBO’s Game of Thrones pilot going into production this autumn. A well-regarded actor, Dinklage may be most recognized for his part as Trumpkin in The Chronicles of Narnia: Prince Caspain. Also announced, Thomas McCarthy has been selected as the director of the pilot. Although primarily an actor, the two previous films he has directed are the well-received indie film The Station Agent in which Dinklage had his first leading role, and the recent film The Visitor, for which he won the Independent Spirit Award for Best Director. He has also won awards at Sundance and other prestigious indepenent film festivals.
Following the recent news of the expansion of the Wild Cards consortium of writers, GRRM has now shared with fans that the first three volumes of the storied superhero series will be reprinted by Tor. In all likelihood, they’ll be released in hardcover, and possibly with brand new covers by Michael Komarck to be consistent with the latest Wild Cards novels published by Tor. Furthermore, the first book that started it all, Wild Cards, will include three new, never before published stories that fit into the book’s chronological survey of the early history of the Wild Card virus.
In related news, Green Ronin has published a set of adventures for their Wild Cards campaign setting, All-In.
The board is now back up, with a major dent put into the total post count thanks to purges. I didn’t get as far as I wanted, but 12 hours of babysitting the purge was more than enough. Sparks also ran some upgrades which will hopefully further improve things.
At his “Not a Blog”, George R.R. Martin has announced several new alumni in the Wild Cards author team for future projects to be announced in the near future. The new additions are David Levine, Cherie Priest, Mary Anne Mohanraj, David Anthony Durham, and Paul Cornell.
Through the end of April, Valyrian Steel has a special sale on remaining Longclaw replica swords. With the price slashed to $200 (from $240), now’s a good time to buy.