I don’t ordinarily do much coverage of pilots that haven’t yet been picked up to series—much less ones that haven’t even been shot yet—but there seems to be a lot of interest in Tuned Inland about HBO’s Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin’s fantasy novels. The pilot starts shooting in October, and The Hollywood Reporter has the news that a ton of major roles have just been cast, including sullied knight Jaime, exiled princess Daenerys and several children of patriarch Eddard Stark (Sean Bean).
(I’ve read some of these names mentioned on fan sites, so I’m not sure if they’re all new, though I don’t believe they were made official before now.)
Martin himself, who’s writing and co-producing the pilot, comments on each actor at his blog, Not a Blog. You can see photos of several of the actors at the Tower of the Hand site, where commenters are already picking over the choices. I don’t think there’s much point in judging any pick on headshots (though keep in mind: a TV show / movie is never going to look like the book did in your head), but I liked Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) in Fox’s Virtuality pilot.
Speaking of which, here’s hoping Thrones has better luck than Virtuality (and here’s an earlier post explaining why I’m hoping).