ASOIAF on HBO

So, I just posted a "holy shit" earlier today regarding the fact that HBO has optioned George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series. That is truly exciting news. For the past several years, since discovering it, this has quickly become my favorite series of books of all time, even better, in my mind, than The Lord of the Rings (and that's not a statement I make lightly). Since I started reading it I've recognized the effectiveness that the story would hfilave on the screen. The way that it's structured has the perfect natural ebb and flow of what works on screen, and a great deal of the dialogue can be copied verbatim. Should it go forward (and with it simply being optioned, it certainly isn't a done deal at this point), Martin will take an active role in its production, including penning at least one episode, which is good news (Martin has a background in teleplay writing)

The books are far too long to get the Lord of the Rings treatment, films for the big screen. The LOTR movies cut quite a bit of stuff out, and still take 12 hours for the extended versions over three movies. That's a full 12 hour season on HBO (where an hour is actually an hour of screen time), and the ASOIAF books are much longer than LOTR (A Storm of Swords, the third book, has more words than the entire LOTR trilogy).

Speculation over on the A Song of Ice and Fire boards has long since come to a consensus that the right way to do it would be to do exactly what is being done; an HBO series with an entire season devoted to each book.

The release said that the plan is to film it in either Europe or New Zealand, and that makes for a big difference. My guess is that if it's done on Europe, it'll be a large stage production ala Rome, probably even utilizing the set that was built for Rome (I've heard that that set is the largest ever created), but still with plenty of countryside locations for location shots. If it's done in New Zealand, it will be largely location, like LOTR. I think I favor the Europe approach, since so much of the series takes place in King's Landing and Winterfell, and the set would be perfect for those locations. But New Zealand would be perfect for the Arya stuff, the countryside shots.

Just thinking about how awesome that series could be if it's done right just sends chills down my spine. If everything goes through and they make it at least through the third season, there are going to be tears at the Red Wedding.

Pretty damn exciting.