Game of Thrones

Many books have been adapted into films.  Sometimes the film is a success, sometimes not.

Occasionally a book or series of books comes along which film-makers would like to film, but, for various reasons, it would not work.  Usually the reason is that the books are too long.  The classic example of this is the Harry Potter books.  As explained in another blog post (point 2), these books contained far to much material to make into good and faithfully-adapted films.  For years I have been saying that the Harry Potter books, if filmed, would only work as a string of TV series.

On a related note, I've just finished watching Game of Thrones season 1.  This is how long books should be filmed.  It was outstanding.  Game of Thrones was based on the first of a series of books called A Song of Ice and Fire, by George R. R. Martin - each of which is over 700 pages long.  Far too long to make into feature films, but superb as a 10-hour-or-so series.  Watch it online or buy the DVD when it comes out.  If you are the sort of person who likes to read the books before watching the films/series, the books are also outstanding.  Highly recommended.

This is how some books need to be filmed.  Forget the feature film model, it doesn't always work.  The HBO (which after all stands for Home Box Office) model works brilliantly.  So if there are any budding directors out there, when you re-film the Harry Potter books, do it this way please.