| A Song of Ice and Fire (HBO, ordered to pilot): Based on George R.R. Martin’s lengthy, long-delayed epic fantasy series (planned to sprawl over seven books), Song is the potential series that has most excited both book and TV fans, if Internet buzz is any indication. Martin’s series, indeed, seems like a good fit for HBO (the network initially described it as ‘The Sopranos in Middle-Earth’), and the author, a former TV writer, will be intimately involved in turning the novels into a series. Each book will equal one season of the show, and the first announced bit of casting (Peter Dinklage as Tyrion) seems almost too good to be true. The books are dense but not so dense that their events can’t easily be conveyed in a 12 episode TV season, and the plots are intriguing with well-drawn characters. That said, the big question here is going to be expense. Once the series leaves the rather intimate first novel behind, will it have the ratings to justify the money needed to build the worlds of the later novels? Chances of succeeding: Solid |