Last Thursday, it was In the Lost Lands. Today, it’s Sandkings. Tomorrow: Every other non-novel George R.R. Martin has ever written?
Director Gore Verbinski, best known for directing several Pirates of the Caribbean films, announced the project in an interview with Collider. This is arguably a bigger deal for fans than the In the Lost Lands movie, because Sandkings is good enough to hold three important distinctions: 1) it’s considered a novelette, 2) it’s important enough that the short story collection it appears is actually titled Sandkings, and 3) it won both the Hugo and Nebula Awards in 1980, Martin’s only story to do so.
The story is what could only be called a doozy: Simon Kress, a rich man on the planet Baldur, buys some mysterious exotic pets called sandkings. These creatures divide into colonies, build small castles, and go to war with each other. When Simon projects a hologram of his head into their terrarium, they even start decorating their castle with images of his face. Unfortunately, Kress is a huge jerk and an extremely bad pet owner, and begins to mistreat the sandkings for his own amusement. I shan’t spoil the story further but suffice it to say things don’t end up well for anybody.
Interesting, this is not the first time Sandkings has received a live-action adaptation; the first was in 1995 as the premiere episode of the rebooted Outer Limits TV series, albeit with several changes. Who knows what the movie might bring?
[referenced id=”1669428″ url=”https://gizmodo.com.au/2021/02/george-r-r-martin-promises-he-got-a-lot-of-winds-of-winter-written-in-quarantine/” thumb=”https://gizmodo.com.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/02/04/mnnmni3pyqcv7qrxpum1-300×169.png” title=”George R.R. Martin Promises He Got a Lot of Winds of Winter Written in Quarantine” excerpt=”Will he let you see it, though? Absolutely not.”]