As mentioned in the post below, a couple bits of movie news caught my eye yesterday, this would be the second of them.
If you've read any of my posts on George R.R. Martin's epic Song of Fire and Ice books and the HBO series spawned by them Game of Thrones, you know I haven't been shy about taking the series to task for straying from the source material. And bitching about Martin's perverse penchant for torturing his loyal readers with the relentless dispatching of sympathetic characters.
Martin, who borders on morbid obesity, has been the subject of numerous online conversations about whether he is healthy enough to churn out the final books in the series (personally I think there needs to be 2 more to tie everything up). And I'm not the only one complaining about the trials and tribulations of his book's characters. Martin has responded to these concerns with an enthusiastic F*ck you, literally, when interviewed on the subject. Saying at one point that he does read the blog postings on his work and has noticed that some writers have picked up on his clues and accurately guessed who he plans to put on the Iron Throne as the book's finale.
As one of my favorite celeb bloggers would say -- there aren't enough bitch please's in the world to fully convey my response to that. If anyone has guessed the finale in the books it is strictly a numbers game. With thousands of bloggers writing about the books and only a limited number of characters, it is a mathematical given that someone would stumble upon the right answer to book's endgame.
With all that in place, news comes out that the producers/writers of the HBO series have decided to create a character out of whole cloth and insert him into the series.
Yep.
With all the divergence from the source material, with all the wonderful characters left out or changed in one way or another, the writers (with Martin's blessing as he is a consultant on the series) have decided we need someone who isn't even part of the books to do . . . something. Who knows what. The character of Malko will be played by the wonderful Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, who I last saw in the cable series Hunted:
I like Akinnuoye_Agbaje as an actor, but couldn't they have found a character from the book for him to portray? I'm just not getting this. There is also news that this next season will contain a lot of flashbacks. Not sure what that's all about except that maybe we're in season five of the series (has it been that many already?) and there are only 5 books. So I'm guessing they need something to fill out this season and stretch book 5 into the next one as the series is contracted through season six. And Martin isn't in a rush to churn out any more. In fact, there is a new book coming out this month, but it's a prequel, nothing but background on the families and maps of Westeros and such. Basically, Martin just put his writing notes in book form and is sitting back and waiting for the money to roll in.
f*cker!
Guess I'll just sit here like the rest of the books/series' fans and wait for what comes next. But I've got to tell you, this is one of the most frustrating literary/cinematic adventures in my lifetime.
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