Werthead

This post and thread is an attempt to put together the 'factual' history (i.e. of the writing of the series) of A Song of Ice and Fire, something I know has been mooted a few times. I dare say this initial post will be much-edited as we get more info and refine things, but this is, as a rough overview, how things have gone down. Long Ago George RR Martin collected toy knights and castles as a child, upgrading to more professional models as he got older. Some of his earliest stories and attempts at fiction in a fantasy world resulted in names thatany ASoIaF fan will find familiar: Prince R'hllor of Raugg and his boisterous, swaggering companion, Argilac the Arrogant were the heroes of a story called Dark Gods of Kor-Yuban (never published). In a planned but never-written sequel, Argilac teams up with Barron, the Bloody Blade of the Dothrak Empire, to slay the winged demons who killed Barron's grandfather, Barristan the Bold. Years later, GRRM reused some of these names in his fantasy series: R'hllor is, of course, the red god of Essos; Argilac the Arrogant was the last Storm King slain by Orys Baratheon during Aegon's Conquest; the Dothrak Empire obviously was recast as the Dothraki khalasars; and Barristan the Bold transformed into Ser Barristan Selmy of the Kingsguard. More on this can be found in GRRM's essay, 'The Heirs of Turtle Castle', in Dreamsongs. Career Divergence In 1983 George RR Martin was a successful author, thanks to the immense success of Fevre Dream, a horror novel about vampires on the Mississippi after the American Civil War. In that year he published The Armageddon Rag, his next novel, about a rock band called the Nazgul and fantastical events surrounding their attempt to reform for a new tour. Whilst very well reviewed and nominated for major awards, the novel bombed commercially and Martin felt that it had almost killed his literary career. He abandoned work on his novel-in-progress, Black and White and Red All Over (the extant material can be found in his collection Quartet) and ended up working in Hollywood, on The New Twilight Zone (1985-89; Martin worked on the first two seasons). In 1987 he moved to Beauty and the Beast, an urban fantasy series set in New York, and worked as a producer, scriptwriter and script editor. He worked on all three seasons of the show before it was cancelled in early 1990. Whilst working in Hollywood, Martin kept his hand in with fiction, publishing Tuf Voyaging (a fix-up novel of previously-published short stories and novellas, with some new material) in 1986 and beginning the Wild Cards series of 'mosaic novels' (short stories by different authors held together by a tight continuity) in 1987. These works sold quite well, with Wild Cards going on to become a major success, restoring Martin's reputation in the literary SF world. A Beheading After Beauty and the Beast's cancellation Martin worked on some pilots and other projects which never made it to the screen. Feeling frustrated creatively in Hollywood (despite being well-paid), Martin returned home to Santa Fe to work on a new novel, Avalon, an epic SF book set in his 'Thousand Worlds' mileu. In 1991, whilst work on Avalon was proceeding satisfactorily, Martin was suddenly struck by the image of a man being beheaded whilst a young boy watched. He wrote the scene and found it expanding into a second chapter and then a third. He was initially unsure if this new work was a short story, a novella, a novel or possibly even more than that. He ended up writing over 100 manuscript pages before he received a telephone call from Hollywood: a pilot script he had been working on, Doorways, had been put into development by the studio. Abandoning work on the new book, Martin decamped to Hollywood to work on the Doorways project for about two years. During this time he found himself thinking about the story, wondering what Tyrion Lannister's story was going to be whilst attending casting sessions and so on. After Doorway's pilot failed to impress the networks, he returned to Santa Fe in 1993 and resumed work on the book. For a time he considered writing a book set in a fictional world but with no fantastical elements. He reconsidered after a talk with his friend and colleague Phyllis Eisenstein, who urged him to 'put the dragons in' and make it a broad, sweeping fantasy epic. By this time he had decided that the series was going to be a trilogy called A Song of Ice and Fire, consisting of the novels A Game of Thrones, A Dance with Dragons and The Winds of Winter. His agent began shopping the project around and it sold to Bantam in the USA and, after a fierce bidding war, to HarperCollins in the UK for the impressive sum of £450,000 (over $600,000 at the time). Expanding the Series and Splitting Books By late 1995 or early 1996, A Game of Thrones had ballooned into a massive novel, more than 1,200 manuscript pages in length. Martin had planned to end the first book with an event called the 'Red Wedding' but he was barely halfway there. He extracted 1,088 manuscript pages, climaxing at a dramatically-satisfying point and delivered it to his publishers. He now believed that the series would be four books in length, with the second half of AGoT now dubbed A Clash of Kings. He resumed work on ACoK whilst AGoT was published in the UK and USA in August 1996 to a reasonably strong reception. In the UK HarperCollins Voyager previewed the book with a free 100-page extract of the novel, whilst in America the Daenerys chapters were condensed into a novella called Blood of the Dragon, which went on to win a Hugo Award in 1997. Whilst work on A Clash of Kings proceeded, Martin was asked to submit a story to Robert Silverberg's Legends collection. He agreed, penning a story set much earlier in the history of Westeros called The Hedge Knight. By this time Martin realised that the story he was telling was much bigger than he first realised. Pausing briefly, he penned a rough outline which convinced him that A Clash of Kings was also going to be two books, and The Winds of Winter was going to be two as well. He also envisaged a 'five-year gap' between the two halves of the story to help the children and dragons age and grow up. When Legends was published in early 1998, the introduction noted that A Song of Ice and Fire was now a six-book series consisting of A Game of Thrones, A Clash of Kings, A Storm of Swords, A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter and A Time For Wolves. A Clash of Kings followed and was published in October 1998 in the UK and in the USA in February 1999. Once again, Martin had a lot more manuscript pages written, including a lot of Tyrion's story for the following story, and this gave him a head start on the third book. He completed A Storm of Swords in late April 2000. By this time, the sales of the series had reached the point where the publishers were prepared to 'rush' the book out: the UK edition hit the shelves just three months later in July, whilst the American edition followed in November, hitting the lower reaches of the New York Times bestseller list. The novel was nominated for the 2001 Hugo Award and came second, narrowly missing out to J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire. The Five-Year Gap Martin begun work on A Dance with Dragons in earnest towards the end of 2000. As planned, the story picked up five years after the events of A Storm of Swords. Initially, this approach worked well, with the younger characters now older and more realistically capable of handling their new storylines. However, as the writing wore on Martin found a growing reliance on flashbacks and exposition to explain why certain ongoing storylines had not progressed for half a decade. By the middle of 2001 this tendency appears to have overtaken the book, making the worth of the five-year-gap questionable. Finally, in September 2001 Martin announced that he had completely scrapped and deleted all of the material he had worked on in the preceding year and started again from scratch with a new book, A Feast for Crows. Work on A Feast for Crows continued for the next three and a half years but was plagued by problems. Martin attempted a new prologue structure which touched base with many 'lesser' characters from Dorne and the Iron Islands rather than just being from one POV. This got far too long and was eventually broken up into a series of smaller chapters scattered through the books. Martin also found that whilst 'filling in the gap' worked well for some characters, such as Brienne, Cersei, Jaime, Sansa and Arya, it did not work out so well for others, such as Tyrion, Daenerys and Jon, who seemed to be ready to move into their next storylines (i.e. the ones planned for A Dance with Dragons) immediately. This introduced timeline problems as the storylines for the two sets of characters threatened to get out of synch with one another. By May 2005, the novel was almost three years overdue. Martin had managed to release a sequel to The Hedge Knight, entitled The Sworn Sword, but the novel remained incomplete and had ballooned to over 1,600 manuscript pages in length. Martin had completed several character arcs, but many of the others only had small amounts of material written for them, or were incomplete. After discussing the situation with his friend and occasional writing partner Daniel Abraham, Martin decided to separate the characters by location, as this also corresponded with the characters whose storylines were complete and those who were not. Characters in the south of Westeros and a few others remained in A Feast for Crows, which comprised 1,100 manuscript pages, and the characters in the North and in Essos were moved into the next book, which now had almost 550 manuscript pages completed for it. Rather than split A Feast for Crows in two, Martin decided that the next book in the series would remain entitled A Dance with Dragons, suggesting that he hoped to combine the originally-planned events for that novel with the 'flipside' of events in A Feast for Crows. A Feast for Crows was delivered in May 2005 and published in the UK in October 2005, and a month later in the United States. Upon A Feast for Crows' publication, the book hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, shifting half a million copies in hardcover in its first year on sale and attracting many award nominations. Dancing in the Dark Martin's original plan - as outlined in the now-infamous 'Note' at the end of A Feast for Crows - was that the 550 manuscript pages he had held back for A Dance with Dragons would remain unchanged and an additional 500-600 manuscript pages would be required to bring the novel to completion. Using the writing speed he achieved at the end of A Feast for Crows (when he wrote 300 MS pages in about six months), he estimated it would take approximately one year to complete the novel. However, this plan proved to be optimistic from the start. After delivering the book, Martin's publishers requested that, after the lengthy gap since ASoS, he take part in the most ambitious signing tour for the series seen yet, including numerous dates across the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom stripped over a period of six months. Once he returned to work on A Dance with Dragons in early 2006 he appeared to reconsider his previous plans for the book, reporting on changes requiring the rewriting of much of the extant material he had left over from A Feast for Crows. The plans for A Dance with Dragons also grew more ambitious: the book was now going to expand substantially beyond the timeline of A Feast for Crows and hopefully further the stories of characters left on cliffhanger endings in that book. This also introduced fresh timeline complexities to the book that Martin found difficult to resolve. Work proceeded slowly and frustratingly on the novel in this period, with Martin later admitting to periods of pressure and stress, both from outside sources and from his own growing perfectionism. Several times Martin reported being months away from completion, only for additional complexities to arise requiring extensive rewrites. In particular, the climax of the book proved extremely problematic with a number of important storylines and major characters set to converge in the city of Meereen. Martin's difficulties with this sequence of chapters (initially two chapters, later broken into four) became known as the 'Meereenese Knot' and appears to have stymied the book's completion for a long period of time. In addition, several bookstores and sellers (most notably Amazon) continuously gave out false and apparently invented release dates without Martin's permission, resulting in reader frustration when these imaginary dates were missed. However, there was also good news: in early 2007 the television company HBO optioned the rights to the series. In late 2009 they produced a one-hour pilot based on the series, and over the second half of 2010 filmed a ten-episode full season based on A Game of Thrones, with Martin acting as a consultant and penning one episode. Martin also completed the third Dunk 'n' Egg story, The Mystery Knight, which was published in early 2010 in the Warriors anthology. Work on Dragons continued through this period. In early 2010 Martin confirmed that A Dance with Dragons' structure was now more ambitious than originally planned: the first half of the book would run alongside A Feast for Crows and the second half would take place after and incorporate a number of additional POV characters from the previous novel as well. The book was substantially larger than first planned as well, eventually coming in at 1,511 MS pages, shorter than A Storm of Swords by only a hair's breadth. Finally, in early March 2011 Martin and his publishers announced a final release date for A Dance with Dragons: Tuesday, 13 July 2011. Despite some scepticism from some quarters, the novel hit the planned release date. Propelled by the success of the Game of Thrones series on HBO, the book not only hit the #1 spot on the New York Times bestseller list, but stayed there for a week and later returned, whilst also spending many weeks in the #2 spot. Impressively, shortly after release A Dance with Dragons rapidly became the biggest-selling fiction novel of the year (although it was later overtaken by 50 Shades of Grey and its sequels). Critical reviews were positive, although there was some criticism of Martin's decision (revealed in an interview) to move some major climaxes out of the book and into the following novel. Winter is Coming... Following the publication of A Dance with Dragons, Martin embarked on a signing tour for the novel. During this tour he confirmed earlier reports that roughly 100-150 MS pages of material had been completed for the sixth book, The Winds of Winter, and that he would very definitely not be making any promises about its release date. Returning home after the tour, he prioritised finishing the fourth Dunk 'n' Egg story (which has the working title The She-Wolves or She-Wolves of Winterfell) and approving The World of Ice and Fire companion book for publication, both due in 2012. He also revealed that a compilation of all four Dunk 'n' Egg stories would follow in the not-too-distant future. In 2012 and early 2013, Martin reported that work on The Winds of Winter had been slowed by him taking on more commitments than he had originally intended in the wake of A Dance with Dragons's completion. These projects - The Lands of Ice and Fire (a collection of maps), The World of Ice and Fire (a guidebook to the series) and a series of anthologies (Old Mars, Old Venus, Down These Strange Streets, Dangerous Women, Rogues) - were completed by early 2013, allowing Martin to concentrate on Winter. Martin also put several other projects, including The She-Wolves, on the back-burner so he could devote more time to the novel. On the red carpet for the premiere of the third season of the Game of Thrones TV series in April 2013, Martin confirmed that he had completed about a quarter of the novel, which he expected to come in at around 1,500 manuscript pages once again (suggesting he had roughly 375 manuscript pages completed and edited, with an unknown number of pages in partials and drafts). Martin chose not to give detailed or specific page counts after that point, although he did refute a highly speculative story in January 2014 that he had 1,000 manuscript pages completed. Castmembers from Game of Thrones gave off-the-cuff reports in late 2013 and early 2014 that Martin had half or more of the book completed, but this information appears to be speculative and has not been confirmed. After The Winds of Winter, a further novel is projected to bring the series to a close: A Dream of Spring (formerly entitled A Time for Wolves). Martin has not ruled out expanding the series to eight books, but has said he'd prefer to keep it to seven. In March 2014, HBO announced that Game of Thrones would end with its seventh season (expected in 2017) and that they would be using storyline and character outlines provided by Martin. Martin confirmed that he hopes to have The Winds of Winter out long before then, with reports from his UK editor suggesting that they hope to publish it in late 2015, but this news raises the possibility of HBO overtaking Martin and completing the story before the final novel is published.

At the moment Game of Thrones is known to be airing on the following channels in the following countries: Argentina, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Mexico, Peru & Venezuela HBO Latin America. Asian Territories HBO Asia in certain countries (unconfirmed so far). Australia On Showcase for Foxtel and Austar, possibly in July 2011. Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Moldova, Montenegro, Poland, Serbia, Slovakia & Slovenia, HBO Central Europe in April 2011. Canada HBO Canada, on 17 April 2011. Denmark, Finland, Norway & Sweden Canal +, possibly in Spring 2011 after the American premiere. France Originally announced as Orange, although some sources are now saying Canal+. Israel DBS. South Africa M-Net (channel DStv 110). Spain Initally on Canal+ starting on 9 May 2011, then six to twelve months later on Nitro, the new free-to-air channel from A3. United Kingdom Sky Atlantic, starting on 18 April 2011, the day after the American premiere. United States Sunday evenings on HBO, starting on 17 April 2011. If you hear other information, please post it here and I'll update this first post.

Yeah, the Qartheen just give her a few ships. There's no sign whatsoever that they're Aurane Waters's ships. In fact, due to the timeline (these are events still happening around the time AFFC starts) it is impossible for them to be Aurane's.

All the worldbuilding information on White Harbour is very interesting and welcome. But, I am concerned that the stuff over Baby Aegon, rumours from the east, the Northmen having difficulty choosing sides and especially Davos examining the reasons for his loyalty to Stannis is all ground that has been covered before, quite a bit. I'm hoping ADWD moves more decisively towards the conclusion of the series at a stronger pace and some other chapters (the prologue and Reek's, in particular) show GRRM covering important events and setting up major plot movements with skillful economy, but this one feels a little more flabby. That said, I could see this being the last we see of Davos and we assume he's dead, then Wyman's fleet turns up later in the book to kick some arse with Davos at its head, and this chapter could just set that up by itself, so maybe that's not a problem. We'll see.

Firefox, latest version. Cleared cache and history, restarted browser, restarted computer, tried it on quick and full edit. No joy. Maybe the edits are taking the post over the maximum character limit?

That's weird. I can't update the original post. Whenever I try and click on Submit Post, it just keeps saying, "You must enter a post." :shocked:

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.