HBO has finally announced the premiere date for the much anticipated television adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s fantasy series, Game of Thrones. Mark your calendars for April 17, 2011! The ten-part series is based on Martin’s book series “A Song of Ice and Fire.”
Martin himself never thought it was possible to adapt his book to a television series. He had previously written for television on series such as Beauty and the Beast and The Twilight Zone in the 1980’s and was frustrated by the constant demise of his grand ideas being shot down due to budgetary restrictions and decided to “write a book that’s just for me:”
“I said, I’m going to write a book that’s just for me. I’m going to do something that’s as epic and huge as my imagination can contain. I’m going to have hundreds of characters, and gigantic battles, and amazing vistas of castles – because I don’t have to worry about a budget and a production schedule and how we’re going to do this. This is prose. All I need is words and my and the reader’s imaginations joining together to do this.”
“So it’s ironic that here we are and we’re producing it. Thankfully [executive producers] David [Benioff] and Dan [Weiss] have to deal with all the problems and I don’t. They have to take this thing that was never intended to be a television show or film and adapt it for television.”
“So far they’re doing a hell of a job at it… But if the show is successful – knock wood – there’ll be a second season and a third season, and it just gets bigger and harder.”
Martin is an executive producer for the show and wrote the eighth episode of its freshman season.
