HBO to Release Adaptation of 'Game of Thrones' Novella
“The Hedge Knight,” which takes place about 90 years before the events in A Game of Thrones, is as good as any short story you’ll ever read.
Via George R.R. Martin on Facebook yesterday:
There's a tournament in Ashford Meadow, and a hedge knight who wants to enter. He call himself Ser Duncan the Tall, but goes by Dunk to his friends. "Dunk the Lunk, thick as a castle wall," some will say, but he means to be a champion.
Provided he can scrape up enough coin for some armor.
Dunk's a large lad, and good steel does not come cheap.
Peter Claffey will be playing our favorite hedge knight, and he's already been sighted around Ashford. HBO was kind enough to provide a picture... and hot damn, he looks as though he just stepped out of the pages of LEGENDS.
Filming started last week in Belfast, Northern Ireland, where much of the original GAME OF THRONES as shot. Based on my novella "The Hedge Knight," the new show will debut early next year, in 2025. Only six episodes for this one. A novella is considerably shorter than a novel (particularly one of my novels), so there's less source material.
I hear that everything is going very well just now. Next month I will get to see for myself. Parris and I will be taking a few of our minions over to Belfast in mid July, to visit the set, meet the cast, and take in some jousting.
I couldn’t resist sharing this news with you because I’m not just a huge fan of Game of Thrones. I’m a huge fan of “The Hedge Knight,” a story written by GRRM that appears in the 1999 fantasy compilation, Legends: Stories By The Masters of Modern Fantasy.
I won’t provide too many details about the story, since GRRM provides a tidy summary himself. But let me say that “The Hedge Knight,” which takes place about 90 years before the events in A Game of Thrones, is as good as any short story you’ll ever read. It is fantasy story-telling at its finest, and contains laughs, and tragedy, jousting, swordplay, and politics.
While the rest of Legends was a bit of disappointment, I can say that “The Hedge Knight” alone was worth the modest price of the book, even though it’s only about forty pages (if I recall correctly).