“Some say the world will end in fire. Some say in ice,” writes Robert Frost in his famous aptly-titled poem ‘Fire and Ice.’ While the debate about the fate of the world continues to flame on, HBO has just made a cool move in landing the rights to George R.R. Martin’s best-selling fantasy series ‘A Song of Fire and Ice.’
Handling the hot project are exec producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who will both write just about all of the episodes. Author Martin, a former TV writer, will write an episode, and also share his burning passion for the project as an exec producer. The series will start with Martin’s first book, 1996’s ‘A Game of Thrones,’ with each book intended to act as the kindling source for each season thereafter.
Although Martin’s fantasy series bears some similarities to J.RR. Tolkien’s ‘Lord of the Rings,’ ‘Fire’ contains more scintillating adult content of the sex and violence persuasion. Filled with a blaze of cool characters, the series follows the exploits of several flawed but complex types from seven noble families. There are already four installments, with the fifth ready to ship hot off the presses after Martin completes it.
Says Martin, adding his own take to the fever of publicity, "They tried for 50 years to make 'Lord of the Rings' as one movie before Peter Jackson found success making three. My books are bigger and more complicated, and would require 18 movies. Otherwise, you'd have to choose one or two characters."
According to Variety, Weiss penned the most recent script for Halo (a project seemingly put on ice at least for now), and adapted the William Gibson novel ‘Pattern Recognition’ for WB and director Peter Weir. ‘Fire’ represents Benioff’s first TV project, although he wrote the script for 2004’s semi-smoking blockbuster Troy. According to IMDB, he is also writing the X-men prequel Wolverine. Which is also pretty cool.
