First off-- looks like the series will be called Game of Thrones. Which is a better name than A Song of Fire and Ice in my opinion. The thing is, I went ahead and read the second book. I wasn’t going to but I do not have the willpower needed to restrain myself, apparently. I am still regretting missing the chance to see this all unfold without prior knowledge.
Secondly-- Entertainment Weekly ran an article on the HBO series’ second installment which kinda sorta disappointed me. It starts off quoting Dany in a scene I do not remember happening in the book. Turns out-- it doesn’t happen in the book. Also, according to the article, there will be lots of Rob and a girlfriend. Huh? There was no Rob in A Clash of Kings. Sure, they talk about Rob a lot. The reader is mostly kept informed of where he is and who he’s fighting, but Rob himself does not appear, much less appear with a girlfriend.
Third thing-- The article mentions two very important (to me) things. There was more money for this installment and the producer said it was spent largely on the big battle. And that the book is split into two seasons. My theory is that the seasons aren’t going to be done book by book (and therefore the seasons aren’t named for the books) but in more TV friendly chunks. I predict the series will end after the Big Battle of King’s Landing.
Which has me wondering. Tyrion spent his first battle unconscious on the HBO show but not in the book. Which I thought was because they didn’t want to have to deal with a Yoda beating up Dooku visual. But now the show will have to deal with that visual, but with an un-battle tested dwarf.
They’re splitting book 2 into 2 seasons? Wow, I didn’t expect that, was book 2 that much longer than 1? (been a long time since I read it, I don’t recall)
I knew they were planning on splitting later books (if the the show lasted that long).
I read the first book after watching Season 1 and enjoyed it immensely. I started the second book, but put it down when I realized I might ruin the experience of watching the series. Normally, I’m the other way around and would rather read first and then watch, but I’m making an exception for this since the show is done so well.
Like TBG, I am surprised to hear that book 2 is going to be split but I had heard they would be splitting later books.
TV shows are different then books. They can’t just drop a character for a full season, as the audience will forget who he is and the actor might wander off and find a new job that will keep him form reappearing later. Better to write a few new scenes with him, especially since a lot of Robb’s stuff in the books happens “off-camera” anyways.
I’m pretty sure Tyrion was knocked out because the show didn’t have enough cash to do a full battle scene that season. Seems to be a common problem with these epic cable TV dramas.
I suspect given Martin’s glacial writing pace that they’re pacing themselves with the TV show, otherwise they risk having the TV series catch up with the novels. If they’re not careful they’ll end up having to film the comic book prequels just to burn time.
I hadn’t heard they were splitting this book into two seasons; I thought they were doing that with later books.
The Rob “romance” is part of a story presented in a later book. If you haven’t read it, I won’t drop any spoilers.
In the books, we don’t really “see” any detailed battles–except for the Battle of Kings Landing. But that was an important one; I understand why they’d give it a big chunk of the budget.
I read all the books just before the first season & liked them a lot. GRRM probably realized he should have done a more detailed outline for the whole huge project, but the TV show seems to have gotten him moving again. Since I didn’t read them as published, I wasn’t as angry at his slowness as some fans. The last book is still sitting here–might sell it back to Amazon & get the paperback. (I read* a lot* of different stuff.)
So far, I think the TV production is fine. I’m OK with the changes made so far.
Yeah, i totally understand the Robb (and Jamie, who is also mostly missing in CoK but will have scenes this season) thing. You just can’t say to an actor “well, see ya next season” on TV, it just does not work that way.
This re-ordering of events to better tell the story is gonna kill me. I had already decided to wait until after the third season to read book three but if the series is going to condense the storytelling (I understand why and do not disagree with the producer’s and writer’s decisions) then I don’t see how waiting to read is going to work.
Also, I’ve been watching HBO’s on demand GoT snippets. Dubrovnik, Croatia is the location used for King’s Landing. Perfect.
Must re-read the article. Also, Iceland is north of the wall. Of course. Reading the article (which I obviously didn’t read correctly the first time) I came away thinking a lot was spent on the battle but now that I think about it, the show runners went back for more money for battles and was told, uh, we gave you a bunch more money. Don’t come crying to me if you spent it all on location shoots.
I also have no idea about the cost of making an HBO series. What is more expensive? Location shooting or CGI’ing north of the wall?
I might be wrong but i think at some point Martin commented on his blog that doing the battle of Blackwater the way it was written on the book would have cost more than the entire season budget. I know a season of Rome cost around 100 million, and last season of GoT cost 60. Keeping the cost down = less change of getting canceled.
