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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.