The Watcher reports:  HBO picks up ‘Game of Thrones’; first picture, cast list

HBO has given a green light to "Game of Thrones," one of the most hotly anticipated shows the network has ever made. The network has committed to the pilot plus nine additional episodes.

The pilot for "Thrones" was shot in Northern Ireland and other European and North African locations in late 2009. Production will resume in June in Northern Ireland. It’s expected that the show will arrive on HBO in the spring of 2011, but no firm date has been set.

Excellent news (except for the part about waiting until some undetermined date in 2011 for it to air).

Via The Guardian:  Excitement as George RR Martin announces he’s 1,200 pages into new book.

Progress, to be sure.

And the following is hilarious:

the wait for A Dance with Dragons has prompted extraordinary levels of anticipation from readers. Some have even created a poster mimicking the Conservative party’s new campaign, which shows David Cameron promising "vote for us and we’ll ensure A Dance with Dragons is released in 2010".

I especially like the “Winter is Coming” tagline.

And while I understand the anticipation for the next tome, this is really ridiculous:

Fans’ vocal impatience for the next instalment reached such a pitch last year that Martin issued an angry statement to stem a rising tide of anger. "Some of you are angry about the miniatures, the swords, the resin busts, the games. You don’t want me ‘wasting time’ on those, or talking about them here. Some of you are angry that I watch football during the fall," the author wrote. "Some of you don’t want me attending conventions, teaching workshops, touring and doing promo … After all, as some of you like to point out in your emails, I am 60 years old and fat, and you don’t want me to ‘pull a Robert Jordan’ on you and deny you your book. OK, I’ve got the message. You don’t want me doing anything except A Song of Ice and Fire. Ever. (Well, maybe it’s OK if I take a leak once in a while?)"

While I will confess to having had the Jordan thought, goodness gracious, you don’t write a guy and tell him that!

Airlock Alpha reports that the newest series of Doctor Who will start airing on Saturday April 17th—two weeks after its premiere in the UK.

Via Geeks of Doom:  George R.R. Martin’s ‘Game of Thrones’ HBO Series Looking More Likely.

io9 does a frame-by-frame breakdown of the trailer for the next series of Doctor Who, so you don’t have to!

According to Airlock Alpha, the new series of Doctor Who will premiere in the Spring on BBC America—apparently in a manner not dissimilar to that of the recent Who specials.

Via the LAT:  ‘Spider-Man’ film team is squashed.

Sir Ian McKellan on The Prisoner, Godot and Gandalf

Via io9: 5 Lessons We Hope RTD’s Learned From His Past Doctor Who Epics.

Davies deserves plaudits aplenty for his revival of the series (and the Whoniverse in general), but as a writer for the series, he has been mediocre as best (and his end-of-series finales have all been flawed in various ways).

Airlock Alpha reports that the first part of the David Tennant’s last episode as the Doctor will show in the US on the 26th of December (a day after it airs in the UK). No word yet on when the second part will air.

The penultimate Tennant episode, The Waters of Mars airs in the US on the 19th of December.