Werthead

Episode titles are preferable (amongst other things, they make identifying them on the wiki easier!). I think either abstract titles, book quotes or simple descriptive ones work quite well. Babylon 5, Lost, BSG and Rome all have great episode titles, for example. Descriptive or quotation episode titles could include (a very obvious selection): As Tall as a King (Tyrion victorious in the duel in the Vale?) The Whispering Woods (or maybe 'The Night is Dark and Full of Terrors') The King of the North (the final episode) The City of Bones (Dany in Vaes Tolorro) A Clash of Kings (confrontation between Stannis and Renly) The House of the Undying (Dany in the warlock house) All Men Must Die (Jaqen killing on Arya's behalf) The Battle of the Blackwater (or maybe 'The Bridge of Ships' or 'The Gates of Hell') The Fist of the First Men The Brotherhood Without Banners The Rains of Castamere (probably less spoilery than 'The Red Wedding') A Storm of Swords (the Battle of the Wall) Book 4 ironically makes things a little easier with the descriptive chapter titles.

Updated with all the new casting news.

Bloody hell, I'd let that get old :) Updated with the new casting announcements (Emilia Clarke, Finn Jones, Kristian Nairn), the new writers and who's writing what episode, and the new director (Brian Kirk) announcement as well.

Yes, Bronn as well I imagine. There is no news about the character being cut, certainly. I didn't list every character in the series for reasons of space ;)

Based on current information (but not secret inside information, as I don't have any), I suspect ADWD will be completed (or all but) before filming resumes, maybe even before we get news on the pick-up. With the overwhelming majority of A Dance with Dragons complete right now, it's more the writing of The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring that might be affected (positively or negatively) by the HBO series. I think we need to come down pretty hard on this rumour, which is getting ridiculous. GRRM isn't waiting for HBO's news before announcing completion of ADWD. Maybe if he finished it a day before HBO were due to let him know, he might hold off to deliver a double-whammy of good news, but otherwise no. If the word from HBO is no, the series will continue in book form anyway, so there is no reason to tie the two together like that. GRRM has promised that as soon as the book is definitely finished and off to his publishers, he will let Parris, his publishers and then the Internet (via his blog and website) know about it.

Meh, I say burn the feature to the ground and salt the digital earth where it once stood. When we didn't have it we didn't miss it, and I doubt many people will miss it when it's gone.

Accidental post.

CURRENT STATUS: Filming of Season 1 completed. HBO will begin transmission of the series on 17 April 2011. Overview Game of Thrones is a television adaptation of the Song of Ice and Fire novels by George R.R. Martin, being developed by the American cable network HBO. The current plan is to adapt each novel as one television season, with A Game of Thrones being adapted as the first season, A Clash of Kings as the second and so on. Game of Thrones is currently being adopted as the overall title for the series. Filming on Season 1 has been completed. If renewed, filming of Season 2 is expected to begin in the Spring. Casting So far the following roles have been cast: This website has an excellent collection of photos of the actors. Additional characters such as Stannis Baratheon, Davos Seaworth, Melisandre of Asshai and Brienne of Tarth will not be cast until/unless a second season is commissioned, following the structure of the books. In a change to the structure, the characters of Brynden 'Blackfish' Tully, Edmure Tully and Lord Hoster Tully have been moved back to Season 2 for budgetary reasons. Credits & Production The series is being executive-produced and developed for the screen by David Benioff (the scriptwriter of The 25th Hour, Troy and The Kite Runner and the author of the novels The 25th Hour and City of Thieves) and Dan Weiss (author of the novel Lucky Wonder Boy and a scriptwriter on the aborted Halo and Ender's Game movies). They are also the showrunners and will be writing episodes 1-3, 5, 7 and 9-10. George R.R. Martin is serving as a consulting producer and plans to script one episode per season, but he said he will mostly take a hands-off role to focus on completing the final two novels in the Song of Ice and Fire series. Martin has also filmed a small cameo appearance for the pilot episode and has already completed his script for the series, which will air as Episode 8. Bryan Cogman worked on the pilot as a script assistant and will be writing Episode 4 of Season 1. Jane Espenson, a genre fan-favourite writer for her work on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Battlestar Galactica and Firefly, will be scripting Episode 6 of Season 1. The pilot episode has been directed by Thomas McCarthy, the award-winning director of small, independent movies such as The Station Agent and The Visitor and an experienced actor (appearing in the movies The Lovely Bones and 2012 and several TV series, including a recurring role as Scott Templeton in the final season of The Wire). Brian Kirk, Tim Van Patten, Alan Taylor and Daniel Minahan are the directors of the series itself, including reshoots on the pilot. Music for the series will be composed by Stephen Warbeck, an Oscar Award-winning composer best known for his work on Shakespeare in Love. The German band Corvus Corax played a troupe of musicians who played at the Winterfell feast scene and two of their songs will apparently be used in this sequence. Modern VideoFilm is handling post-production requirements. The amount of effects and CGI requirements for the pilot are known to include a CGI wheelhouse (for Cersei's travelling party), digital extensions to the real castle locations, scenes and panoramas outside of set windows and possible crowd extension work. It is assumed that CGI will also be used to depict the Others in the prologue sequence. Effects personnel known to be working on the pilot include Julia Frey, who has worked on projects including Alien 3 and John Adams, and Robert Stromberg, who came to the project fresh from his work on the movies Avatar and Alice in Wonderland. Frey has confirmed that she will not be working on the series itself. Filming of the pilot episode was divided into two shoots, with the scenes in King's Landing, Winterfell and beyond the Wall being filmed in Scotland and Northern Ireland. Doune Castle in Scotland and Castle Ward in County Down, Northern Ireland stood in in for Winterfell, with Tollymore Forest Park in County Antrim serving for the scenes in the haunted forest. Cairncastle in Antrim was also used for the execution scene and where the Stark children find the direwolves in the snow. For the series itself filming mostly took place in Northern Ireland with no return to Scotland. The Paint Hall Studios in Belfast were used for several interior sequences. Scenes set in Pentos were filmed in Morocco, near the city of Ouarzazate. Sets for the movie Kingdom of Heaven were re-used for some scenes set in and around Ilyrio's manse, including Daenerys and Drogo's wedding. For the series itself, this material was reshot in Malta and Northern Ireland. Severel Maltese towns and cities, most notably Mdina, also doubled for the exteriors and (CGI-enhanced) aerial shots of King's Landing. FAQ What material does the first episode cover? The first episode starts with the book's prologue and features all of the material up to "The things I do for love,". The second Daenerys scene, involving her marriage, has been brought forwards to the first episode as well, and there is some new dialogue between Eddard and Jaime during the Winterfell feast. There is also a brief new scene in King's Landing where Jaime goes looking for Tyrion to tell him they are going to Winterfell. Do any the producers/actors post on this message board? Can we make casting suggestions to them? Producers David Benioff and Dan Weiss very occasionally post on the board and have asked for ongoing casting suggestions in this subforum. None of the actors post on the board as yet, but several do read it, and have expressed admiration for the Photoshopping thread. As mentioned elsewhere, George R.R. Martin does not read the boards, but his partner Parris does, and occasionally posts. Note that because castmembers do visit the boards, we ask contributors to be polite in their descriptions or assessments of particular actors and their suitability for their roles, particularly remembering that no-one has seen a finished episode as yet. Do any of the boardmembers have a role in the production? Several boardmembers served in the pilot episode as extras, and one as a weapons advisor. Please note that those boardmembers who have done so will have signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement with HBO which will significantly limit what they can discuss here, and we ask other boardmembers to be respectful of those limitations. Several more boardmembers attended the joint GRRM/cast signing event and party in Belfast in early November 2009 and their reports can be read here. My own report on the event, with pictures, can be read here, here and here. What other websites are covering the production? Westeros.org has its dedicated TV news/article section here. The blog Winter is Coming has been following the production here. Wikipedia's article on the TV series is here. Chicago Tribune TV critic Maureen Ryan has been covering the series here. George R.R. Martin occasionally covers the production in his Not-a-Blog here. HBO's official Facebook page is here. An unofficial Facebook page for the TV series is here. My own blog is covering developments here. A Game of Thrones TV-specific Wiki can be found here. How are HBO addressing the young ages of some of the characters with regards to sex and violence? Almost all of the characters, children or adult, are being aged up by at least a few years. Robb and Jon are 17 rather than 14, Daenerys is 15 rather than 13 and so on (the actors are older). Sean Bean, who plays Ned Stark, is fifteen years older than Ned in the books, whilst Mark Addy is ten years older than Robert Baratheon as described in the books. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Lena Headey are around 7 years older than in the books. These age increases are partly down to legal requirements for the amount of time the younger actors can spend on set and their involvement in sexually explicit scenes, and also down to storytelling considerations: George R.R. Martin has also said that in retrospect he should have made the characters a few years older at the start of the books, and may have advised the TV producers to do so for the series. How are HBO handling the direwolves? The dead direwolf mother is a physical prop. The direwolf pups are real-life wolf pups. The young direwolves are also real animals. For the adult direwolves, HBO will use a combination of CGI and real animals. How is the show handling the books' POV structure? As far as is known at the moment, the series will not be using any special means to reproduce the POV structure from the books (each chapter being from a specific POV only). This frees them to move around and show different characters and different reactions in a given scene. The POVs will still be important, however, because the POV characters are also, mostly, the main protagonists of the series. How is the show handling the languages? Westerosi is being depicted as English, possibly with different (British) accents to differentiate different areas. An actual linguistics expert was hired to work out a viable Dothraki grammar for scenes involving Khal Drogo and his followers. Whether this will continue in the series for other languages (the bastard Valyrian of the Free Cities or Slaver's Bay, the languages of Qarth and so forth) remains to be seen. How are the supernatural elements being handled? The Others are still in the prologue scene and the dragon eggs and the dragons themselves are still in the story. A notable change from the books is that the Others' ability to raise the dead to fight for them as wights is not revealed in the prologue. Whether this has been removed from the series altogether, or if it is being held back to generate greater surprise later on, or if this was an idea in the early draft of the script which has since been changed, is not known. How is HBO handling the geography of Westeros? The planned title sequence for the series involves a crow flying across a map of the continent, from the Wall to King's Landing, passing over points of importance in the first season (Winterfell, the Twins, the Eyrie and Riverrun) along the way. It is possible that this will be adjusted in later seasons to incorporate other locations (maybe Dragonstone, Pyke and Storm's End in the second season, for example). We may also see in-situ maps during strategy and planning sequences, for example. It is unknown if there will be maps depicting the location of Pentos and Daenerys' journey in relation to Westeros (but note that there aren't any in the books either). Scenery and establishing shots will likely be a combination of real-world photography and CGI where necessary. How will HBO depict the battles on their budget? This isn't a huge issue for A Game of Thrones, as the Battle of the Whispering Wood is heard more than seen and the Battle of the Camps is given as a report in Tywin's tent rather than depicted. This only leaves the Lannister assault on Roose Bolton's forces, where only part of the battle detached from the main action is depicted from Tyrion's POV, and this is easily depictable on HBO's budget (which is considerably larger than many other series depicting battles, such as say the BBC's Merlin or various historical documentaries). How the much vaster Battle of the Blackwater in the second season and the Battle of the Wall in the third are handled remain to be seen. How are HBO handling the significantly greater length of Book 3? Again, this is a situation that will be addressed down the road. Solutions for dealing with the much greater bulk of Book 3 may include trying to solicit more episodes for this particular season (something done by The Wire and The Sopranos in the past), filming the story over a greater number of episodes than usual and then splitting it in two to form two shorter seasons (an approach favoured by the new Battlestar Galactica) or simply selectively editing the source material to fit into 12 episodes. However, comments by George R.R. Martin suggest that HBO are currently looking at splitting the book into two seasons, using the Red Wedding as the S1finale. This would expand the TV series to eight seasons. How are HBO handling the splitting of characters in the fourth and fifth books? Neither HBO nor GRRM have commented on this directly, but the casting sides indicated that characters who are not in A Feast for Crows but are in A Dance with Dragons will be required for 'Season 4'. This suggests that the timelines and events of the two books will be combined by chronological order and then allowed to unfold across two seasons. This arrangement is not confirmed, however. How faithful is the series to the books? According to the pilot script, very faithful. A fair amount of the dialogue is identical, character and location descriptions seem to being followed and where changes are being made, they are being made with the knowledge of George RR Martin. On at least one occasion the TV producers were thinking about moving away from the books (by giving the Lannisters notably different weapons to differentiate them from the Starks), but chose to stay close to the books instead after receiving advice from fans. They have also employed some of the people involved in A Song of Ice and Fire merchandising, such as the makers of the replica Valyrian Steel swords, in matching the look and feel of the books using their experience. How faithful later episodes are remains to be seen. However, given that the pilot covers about 12% of the book and it's a 10-episode first season, it is more likely that the biggest deviations from the books will involve the addition of new material rather than the removal of anything already there. What happens if HBO catch up with the production of the books? HBO are aware of the writing/publication time of the books and the issues involved, and have so far indicated no concern over this being a problem. Given that HBO are known for taking much longer (sometimes 18-24 month) breaks between TV seasons, it is possible that that GRRM will be able to remain ahead of the TV production even if the sixth and seventh books in the series take four to five years each to produce. However, since to get to a sixth, let alone a seventh, season Game of Thrones would have to be one of the most successful shows on HBO at the time, it is a problem they would love to have. In addition (speculation), the very fact the books are not finished and people can't go out and read the last page of the last book to immediately find out how the story ends may also be attractive to HBO. Can HBO afford this in the long run? They did cancel ROME, CARNIVALE and DEADWOOD, after all. HBO have taken production decisions to minimize the budget of Game of Thrones without compromising quality. Rome's huge budget was a result of filming in Rome, the most expensive shooting location in the world. Game of Thrones is being filmed in the UK and Morocco with impressive tax breaks and free use of the Paint Hall facility. The cancellation of Carnivale and Deadwood were also partially down to problems beyond the budget. In addition, at the times that all of these shows were cancelled HBO did not take into consideration DVD/Blu-Ray sales, iTunes or other legal download sales. They later indicated that they could have kept Rome on the air due to its impressive DVD sales and stronger-than-expected ratings for the second season (aired after they'd decided to cancel it). As a result, they have acknowledged that the cancellation of Rome was premature and they will try not to make the same mistake again. Is GRRM waiting for news from HBO before announcing A Dance with Dragons is finished? NO. In GRRM's own words, as soon as ADWD is finished he will tell Parris, his publishers and then us via his website and blog. HBO's decision has nothing to do with the book publishing side of things.

In Season 2 GRRM could be an ironborn in the scenes on Pyke. Maybe doing a pirate schtick, possibly bellowing the now-infamous, "Yer cock-eyed bastard!" line in the background or something? They could give him a patch and peg leg :pirate: Wouldn't being an Other require George shaving off his beard? Wouldn't that endanger his fantasy-writing powers? Seriously, the number of successful epic fantasy writers with impressive beards is too many to make me think that there isn't some kind of correlation there.

If we're talking about George have a cameo in the pilot, then it seems a shame the Jon Arryn/Pycelle/Cersei scene was taken out. He could have played Jon Arryn, since he sets the whole story in motion, which would be fitting ;)

Not 100% confirmed yet I believe, but it looks very likely. I suspect they won't just announce him by himself, though, and will wait until they have at least Cersei, maybe Bran as well.

As others have said, Pullo's darker side was very reminiscent of Sandor in many ways, although Sandor is probably less likely to bite someone's tongue out and spit it in their face ;) His odd-tender relationship with that slave girl across the two seasons also shows a more exposed side that would be useful in the scenes with Sansa. He is also an actor accomplished and experienced in combat, which is useful. I agree he's not the only person who could do it, not by a long shot, but he's someone we know could do it very well. I've also seen him in a couple of other British productions and he does have a more impressive range than what you might expect from just seeing him in Rome. For my part I was actually touting James Purefoy as Ned Stark for a while, based again on him being a very versatile actor (Ned has little in common with Mark Antony and less with Captain Blackbeard) and looking the part to a T (especially his bearded look in Season 2 just before Philippi). However, it was indicated a while back that we shouldn't necessarily expect major roles for the Rome stars in GoT, if only because that show has put them up for other, higher-profile roles and they might not be up for only a few episodes' work a season as they would be in GoT (although I'm still saying Purefoy for the Oberyn Martell extended cameo in Season 3!). So even the presence of Nina Gold as casting director shouldn't mean that Rome actors will be considered for major roles. Supporting roles, I can imagine, if only because Rome used so many excellent British actors that it's unlikely there won't be any actors at all shared between the two series. The presence of Nina Gold does make me hopeful she'll bring in some of the Devil's Whore actors like John Simm and the mighty Peter Capaldi, who for some reason has lodged in my mind as Aerys II in flashback scenes, although I'm sure there's a bigger role that could be found for him. Ten years ago he'd have been the perfect Littlefinger but is probably too old for it now.

It is interesting. From the presence of the mutineers in AFFC's cast list, I was guessing that Jon was going lead a punitive expedition to Craster's Keep to punish them. I didn't expect them to turn up again like this.

From your 'summer' comment I thought you meant it was going to be down for a bit longer than a few hours ;) Okay, it seems okay. Content all seems to be there, I can make changes and edit and - most importantly - it's now loading pages in less time than it takes me to make a cup of tea, which I'm guessing was the original objective? Nice.

Hmm. The one alternative I can suggest is putting up new entries on the ASoIaF Wikia instead, and then transferring them to the Board Wiki when it goes back up. The only issue is that I haven't copied any of the character templates over. I suppose editors can still put content up and worry about the templates when the Board Wiki resurfaces. I'm developing an idea that the Wikia could be used exclusively for the HBO series to avoid duplication of effort, but until that begins my plan was to use the Wikia as a sort of back-up or testing ground for the board one.

There is no way that those pages were going to survive on Wikipedia itself. They were non-notable and there are no sources to back them up. The book pages, the page on the author, the page on the series, even a page on the characters (we can probably find references to critics mentioning the differentiation of the characters from other fantasy series, the whole 'so venemous they could eat the Borgias' quote and so forth), but on the wars, tournaments and strongholds? I'm not seeing it. We knew they were fancruft when we created them, but went ahead because lots of other series and franchises had similar pages. Now they're all being shut down, and in most cases I'm not seeing an argument for keeping them going.

Regarding discussion of Amoka's art, isn't there an issue that regardless of if he gives us his permission to use it and the license allows us to use it without screwing up the copyright, there is another issue in that most of his pictures have already appeared in-print in The Art of Ice and Fire? Wouldn't that mean that regardless of what Amoka says, we'd need to get GRRM and Fantasy Flight's permission to use the images? Or was it just a case that they 'borrowed' the images from Amoka but he retains the original use of them? This could have a bearing on the Total War mod as well.

The Welsh dragon doesn't have three heads, and neither does the one Bantam stuck on the cover of ADWD (which is still one of the cheapest art design decisions I've ever heard of). This was also a case of my dad agreeing to knock something up in ten minutes (he usually charges for this stuff ;) ) rather than designing something from scratch.

I also asked my dad (professional artist/graphic designer) to throw together a new logo for the Wikia. To avoid trampling on copyright I suggested just nicking the Welsh dragon (if it's good enough for Bantam...). It turned out pretty smart so if you're interested in using it on the board one as well, here it is.

Interesting. Looks like Wikipedia is going through one of its convulsions and a lot of the fancruft pages are being cleared out. 'Wars in A Song of Ice and Fire' and 'Strongholds' are up for deletion and I do not doubt that 'Tourneys' and some of the others will follow. Looks like Happy Ent's dream of pushing Wikipedia's guidelines to the limit is about to be scuppered. I recommend copy-pasting valuable pages to the other Wikis before they are lost for good, as I can't see any argument that would save those pages from being deleted from Wikipedia.

I'd say in situations like this sticking 'c.' or 'ca.' (whichever is more encyclopedic), in front of the year is the best option to go for.

Tried uploading the map of Westeros to the Wiki but no dice I'm afraid. I hit Upload and it looks like it's working, but then times out and goes to a white screen, and going to the target URL doesn't work either. Tried it two or three times to no avail.

Ran, is it possible to find out the answer to the long-standing question of if Asshai is on the Essosi continent or on a Yet Further Eastern landmass? It's kind of hard to write an article on the Jade Sea without knowing if it is a whole other ocean or just a giant version of the Black Sea (or the Circle Sea from the Discworld books) with Asshai (and presumably Yi Ti and the Shadow Lands) on the far shore but still on the same continent as Qarth and the rest. Or is this a R-(the World Book)-AFO? ;)

The Star Trek and Lost bases are small? :stunned: Looking through Memory Alpha and Lostpedia pretty much all the images are covered by the Copyrighted-but-it's-Fair-Use clause, which as I said I'm guessing extends to publicity photos (although a lot of those pictures are screen-grabs rather than official screenshots released by Paramount or ABC). I conclude that means that the various TV series articles can be illustrated with screenshots once it gets underway, but that actual physically-created media, like artwork, is out of bounds unless specifically released into the public domain (like your map) or justifiable under fair use for illustrative purposes (we can put up the cover of The Art of Ice and Fire but none of the interior art). Didn't the Wikipedia team conclude that we'd gone as far as we could without getting hit with tons of AFDs? Personally I think we were pushing it with Historical Wars, War of the Usurper and Strongholds of A Song of Ice and Fire (some of which I created but hey ;) ), which are not really notable outside of the series itself. The benefit of the Wiki (either one) is that there is no limit to notability. If you want an individual article on the birds nesting in the Red Keep's roof you can do that. If you mean we should try to campaign to change Wikipedia's rules, I'm not sure that the current system (broad pages on Wikipedia, detailed pages on the franchise's dedicated Wikia) isn't a decent way of dealing with the issue. Meh, you just need to start the ball rolling and others will eventually turn up. If we rustled up a dozen people willing to work on modding Medieval 2 for Westeros, I'm sure there's plenty of people out there willing to write a two-paragraph article on the Inn of the Kneeling Man.

It seems to be working, in a very slow and creaky fashion, but yes it is up again :) No shiny logo, but uploads seem to be possible. May have spoken too fast. The 'edit page' button has vanished so you can't change anything.