Tagged: True Blood

HBO Orders ‘Game of Thrones’ Pilot

  • News
  • November 12, 2008

The trades are reporting that HBO has finally given a pilot order to A Game of Thrones, the first in George R.R. Martin’s bestselling A Song of Fire & Ice series. The television version will be executive produced by David Benioff (X-Men Origins: Wolverine) and D.B. Weiss (Halo).

HBO picked up the rights on January 17, 2007 with Variety describing the series as "an epic struggle for power set in a vast and violent fantasy kingdom." Which is putting things mildly. Martin, called by Time as an American Tolkien, has created a sprawling saga with dozens of characters currently projected to be seven volumes long and is a modern day epic fantasy which would be challenging for even premium cable to adapt.

 “Fantasy is the most successful genre in terms of feature films given the incredible popularity of Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter movies,” Benioff told The Hollywood Reporter. “High fantasy has never been done on TV before and if anybody can do it, it’s HBO. They’ve taken tired genres and reinvented them — mobsters in The Sopranos and Westerns with Deadwood.

“It’s not a story with a million Orcs charging across the plains,” Weiss said. “The most expensive effects are creature effects and there’s not much of that.”

Ever since the option was announced, the producers have insisted that each season would adapt just one of the thick novels.  Martin was also committed to writing at least one episode per season.  He began working on the pilot in 2007, completing a first draft in August.  A second draft was announced as being completed in June 2008. HBO exercised their option on the series in September before yesterday’s announcement.

A Game of Thrones was released in 1996 and won critical acclaim, earning the Locus Award for Best Novel (Fantasy) while earning nominations at the World Fantasy and Nebula Awards.

The other books in the series are A Clash of Kings (1998), A Storm of Swords (2000), and A Feast for Crows (2005). Announced but not yet delivered, written or scheduled are A Dance with Dragons, The Winds of Winter, and A Dream of Spring.  The saga has also led to three novella and act as prequels to the first novel.

Martin actually was at work on Dragons when he realized things were not working and he tossed out much of the work and announced at the Millennium Philcon in 2001 that he was writing a different book to continue the story before resuming Dragons. That became Crows which tightened its focus on a handful of characters while the next book would shift the spotlight to others. An anticipated 2008 publication date came and went and Bantam is hopeful it will receive the manuscript in time for a spring 2009 release.

The one obstacle left is being better than the ten other projects in development at the cable network. Although six are expected to get the series go-ahead, HBO can be choosy under its new regime which jettisoned several other projects already, including Preacher.

Martin plans seven books in the series. The producers intend for each season to span one novel.

THR notes, “Combined with True Blood, this also suggests an interesting, AintItCoolNews-targeted direction for the network. Less edgy-PBS, more R-rated Comic Con.”
 

Alan Ball Talks ‘True Blood’

  • News
  • October 12, 2008

trueblood-3179885Director Alan Ball spoke with Moviehole about the reaction to his adaptation of True Blood, now about halfway through its first season on HBO.

He was drawn to the book series because it “seems like such an original mix. There’s so much in there that I really enjoyed. There’s a gothic-romance element, and I probably wouldn’t have enjoyed it if that’s all it had been about, but there was also sex, violence and this serial murderer, all set in this crazy world where vampires are struggling for equal rights. And then there’s this cliffhanger old Saturday-afternoon matinee feel. It’s just really, really fun to work on.”

The show, recently picked up for a second season, stars Anna Paquin as a telepath in a small southern town who develops a relationship with a vampire who recently moved in nearby.

“She’s good casting,” he said. “Thank god she wanted to do TV! When the casting director said ‘Are you interested in Anna Paquin?’ I shot back ‘Well, yeah, but is she interested in this?’ She says ‘Yeah, she is’. Anna pursued this role, and thank god she did because… she really gives the show heart… soul. It’s a great cast, lets not discount anyone else in the cast, but playing someone whose been hearing someone else’s thoughts their entire life isn’t easy – and she makes it look easy.”

His adaptation of Towelhead is currently in theaters, having received largely negative reviews and he’s now at work on the second season. “I’m working with the writers on Monday. And I have two screenplays that I’ve written over the years, both original, that I may do. I think I’d like to direct one and I think I’d like to produce one. I’m playing with the idea of becoming a production company. But there’s nothing definite on the horizon besides True Blood.”

He added that actors he’s worked with elsewhere will be found on the series including Towelhead’s Lena Collins and Six Feet Under’s Chris Messina. “I tend to do that – work with actors again, especially if I feel they’re really good and are a pleasure to work with. If something is right for them, I’ll look them up.”

As for the future, he said, “I’ve found that after Six Feet Under, and now Towelhead, that the things I’m not drawn to seem to be genre – which was never the case for me before. I certainly have ideas for films that seem to be more science-fiction – that’s the label that best describes them – even though these two new scripts I’ve written both take place in the real world, one being a period piece. In terms of what I’m reading, and are interested in though, I sort of feel like I’ve had my fill of angst.”
 

Early Review: True Blood

True BloodFor too long, paranormal dramas have been restricted to basic cable where they become weighed down with melodrama and morals that everyday teens can take away from each episode. I’d like to say that [[[True Blood]]] breaks that trend, but, sadly, it does not and with the exception of a few expletives and some exposed body parts, this show could certainly be made for ABC or the oh-so-hip CW.

From the Alan Ball, the creator of the acclaimed HBO series [[[Six Feet Under]]] comes the TV series based on [[[The Southern Vampire Mysteries]]] book series by Charlaine Harris about a southern telepathic waitress named Sookie Stackhouse who solves mysteries involving vampires, werewolves, and other such creatures. Keep in mind, this series was written four years before the nation’s newfound interest in vampires was peaked with Stephanie Meyer’s [[[Twilight]]] series. That said, this still isn’t safe from being called a watered down version of [[[Buffy The Vampire Slayer]]].

There were only a few scenes that were of interest to any fan of the vampire mythos, the rest establishing the faux racism storyline that seems to be the backbone of the show. In a world where vampires have “come out of the coffin” (not my turn of phrase) and are now publicly known, they become the new racial scapegoat for the scared and angry citizens of Southern America to abuse. This storyline borders didacticism by using “vampire” as a replacement for words like “black” or “gay” or even “cylon”. In a world where these immortal creatures walk the earth, why should they care what the clerk at the Quik-N-Stop has to say to them? Unanswered questions like these makes one realize why this series needs to be looked at like a Vampire Romance novel, instead of a replacement for something like Buffy or [[[Angel]]], much like watching [[[The New Adventures of Lois & Clark]]].

Outside of plot holes like that, the other two issues with the pilot were the pacing and acting. The pacing seems to be almost at a torturous level, leaving entire chunks of time where nothing more than a lot of pensive staring goes on. We understand that there is a lot of animosity between the vampires and the “mortals”, but they can rip your throats out, so stop looking like a pissed off toddler. The acting  (I won’t go into how bad the southern accents are) and motivation of characters just came across as inconsistent, as many of them were either set as “angry girl” or “delusional grandmother”. There was hardly any reasoning behind these emotions, and they felt unnecessary and distracting.

The ending left for a good cliffhanger and a want to pursue the next episode, which I encourage. This series will hopefully improve and become slightly more watchable, but this doesn’t seem like another Buffy the Vampire Slayer or even a Twilight, instead just a watered down amalgam of the two.  Rating 6/10

True Blood debuts on HBO Sunday evening at 9 p.m. and has a twelve episode season.

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