Howden Martin - Games of Thrones A-Z

Fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire had been declared by many including, damningly, its own creator George R. R. Martin unfilmable. It was too dense, filled with too many characters and had too many subplots to weave into a three-hour epic movie. The key word was too, and taking anything substantial out was like a house of cards: one misplaced stumble and it would all fall down.

You also have to factor in the fans. Devotion doesnt cover it, and cutting out swathes of text just to make a movie that captured the title and not the heart of the series would see a swift and sharp reaction. And, unusually for a fantasy series, these werent your typical readers for this genre. Martin gave fantasy a mainstream jolt, thanks to pacey plotting, readable characters and intense action scenes. He gave his characters depth, eschewing the usual fantasy staples hero, whore, villain and witch. They were real people in a real world at least the one that Martin had created.

But there was another solution to solving the problem of too. Adapting it for TV was always the obvious option. It allowed more breathing space but would still require patience. It wouldnt all be explained, and some plot lines would be frustrating to follow at first. However, there would be rewards, as Martins world became clearer as the series went on.

Luckily, this wasnt a new thing for viewers of the small screen over the past couple of decades, and we have HBO to thank for this the very company that would oversee the TV adaptation of the novels into Game of Thrones. HBO is unarguably the king of sophisticated viewing, thanks to its system of receiving money through subscriptions rather than advertising, which means it is not hampered by the usual restraints that hinder other network TV shows.

Following the success of shows like The Wire, The Sopranos and many others, viewers are accustomed to immersive worlds that take time to unfold their stories. Characters are fleshed out rather than portrayed as having reached the pinnacle of human virtue. And unlike previous decades, when TV was seen as the ugly sister to cinemas handsome brother, the small screen can now be a byword for excellence, with many now preferring to while away their weekends with five- to six-hour bursts of a new world on TV box sets than going to the cinema.

A Game of Thrones screen journey all began with a meal in 2006 between two young men and an older man, a portly looking wizard, usually dressed entirely in black. George R. R. Martin had heard it all before. These two young men werent the first to come to him with a chance to tackle his mammoth series on the screen. Ever since the book was first published, he had been courted by Hollywood. And listen he would ever polite, he would stifle his yawns and hold back on the eye rolling, as producers waxed lyrical about the franchise, while at the same time explaining all the scenes they would have to cut to make it into a movie. And then Martin would go home, declining the offer, despite, in his words, the truck loads of money being offered. He had resigned himself to his series never being seen on the big screen.

But these two men that Martin continued to talk to long after lunch were convinced they could do the impossible.

Weiss remembers receiving a postal delivery of the books and reading some of the pages. Some pages soon became hundreds, and it wasnt long before he was doing something he hadnt done since he was a child devouring nothing but a book, and finishing it in a matter of days. He was hooked, as was Benioff.

Benioff told entertainment website Collider, When the books were originally sent to us, they were sent over to consider as feature adaptations. In reading them, the very first decision we made, probably a week after we started reading the books and having more fun than we have had reading anything in years, was that these were not going to work as features because there are such massive sprawling tapestries, so many characters and so many plotlines.

The movie version, he explained, would have to simplify everything, and cut it down to maybe one storyline, so that its the Jon Snow movie, or the Daenerys movie, or whatever else, and you are probably going to end up eliminating about 95 per cent of the characters, storylines and complexities. That wasnt interesting to us. We did want to adhere as closely as possible to Georges world, knowing that there were going to be certain deviations, but we didnt want to get rid of so much of what made it special.

Benioff also explained that, unlike many other fantasy series, these were books written for adults. This is not fantasy written for 12-year-old boys, he said. Not to say that there arent 12-year-old boys out there who would love it, but for the most part its a more sophisticated readership, and we wanted to keep that. We wanted to keep the sexuality of the books. We wanted to keep the profanity. To have a PG-13 movie where Tyrion never gets to say the C word, it just wouldnt be Tyrion any more, and we wanted that. We wanted the brothel scenes. We wanted the bloody violence. You know that someones head gets chopped off and you are going to see blood spurting out. You dont want to not do that because its a PG-13 movie, and you only get two blood spurts per hour.

Martins meeting with Benioff and Weiss tickled him, and he came away thinking that maybe, just maybe, he had found his admittedly small band of warriors willing to risk it all to win their version of the Iron Throne to adapt A Song of Ice and Fire.

Having flirted with the idea of a film, they too knew that it would have to be a TV series, and they pitched it to the only real network in town HBO.

On 18 January 2007, Martin announced the news that fans of the book had been waiting for HBO had optioned the series. Yes, its true. Winter is coming to HBO, he said, adding, A Song of Ice and Fire should be in very good hands. I am thrilled to be in business with HBO.

However, Martin, a veteran of TV, was quick to warn excited fans that a long and winding road awaited. He added, A television series does not spring up full-blown overnight, of course. You wont be watching Game of Thrones on HBO next week, or telling TiVo to record it next month. Maybe this time next year youll be seeing Tyrion and Dany and Jon Snow in those HBO promo spots.

HBO liked it, Ive been told, and theyre doing a budget on it now, but they still havent given it a green light. Of course, the writers strike has hit now, so theres no telling whats happening in Hollywood. But HBO is what Ive wanted for this from the beginning. The book series will be about 10,000 manuscript pages when its all done, so the storys just too big for even a series of movies. And theres a lot of sex and violence, which is one reason I couldnt look too seriously at the broadcast networks. HBO can do it the way it would have to be done. Ive got my fingers crossed. Its all in HBOs hands now.

He should have heeded the warning himself. Unfortunately, it wouldnt be a year later at all and, indeed, a frustrated Martin told his fans via a blog post in June 2008, A Game of Thrones remains a script in development, not a series in production.

In another blog post, he added, From the start of this, Ive told myself, Dont get too emotionally invested in this, or you will be devastated if it doesnt go. Wise words, those. Im a smart guy. But easier said than done. Ive failed. I am totally emotionally invested, and if HBO does indeed decide to pass, for whatever reason, I will be gutted. So lets all hope I am soon doing the happy dance instead.