Song of Ice & Fire to become HBO series

Variety reports that David Benioff (writer of Troy and 25th Hour) and D.B. Weiss (screen adaptations for Halo and Pattern Recognition) are to write and produce a series on HBO of George R.R. Martin's fantasy series.

For those who have read the series, of which four out of seven have been written, this is pretty big news. Rome proves that HBO can do high budget bloody spectacle, which this undoubtedly will be. But will it be any good?

Benioff involved is mostly good news. Troy was boring, but his novel the 25th Hour, and the film, are very good, and a friend said his recently published collection of short stories had some excellent stuff in it. Don't know about Weiss, but if Weir approved of his adaptation of Gibson's Pattern Recognition he has to have plenty going for him.

But doing this right is going to be pretty difficult. Martin himself has said that he wrote the series to come away from the budgetary restrictions of writing for television (he co-wrote and produced the Beauty & the Beast series with Ron Perlman and Linda Hamilton). And each book requires dozens of pages at the end to go through lineages and alliances. Each book has a cast of hundreds, taking place in dozens of widely removed locations. The writers and producers have their work cut out for them.

It will probably take a few years for this come out anyway, so by that time they will probably have done it half-right, at least. And maybe the fifth part will be out, as well.

And if you haven't read the series you should definitely give it a shot. Frankly, some of the most riveting stuff you can read anywhere, and some of my favorite novels ever.