It might be the most anticipated new show of 2011. It's certainly in the top five. Now, fans, we have a date to mark on our calendar: winter will be coming in April.

Game of Thrones, HBO's newest fantasy drama, will undoubtedly be big. Already it has some major names attached, like Sean Bean and Lena Headey. It's based off the incredibly popular fantasy book series, A Song of Ice and Fire, and will reportedly follow those books closely. HBO's had good luck with book adaptations before; case-in-point: True Blood.

Now, the series has a premiere date: April 17, 2011. That is, of course, a Sunday, a little over four months away. The premiere will be competing perhaps most heavily against AMC's The Killing, which will have premiered two weeks earlier. It'll be interesting to see the two freshman shows duke it out for pay-cable supremacy.

Here's what HitFix has to say about the show:

"Fantasy and science fiction fans are very intense," said George R.R. Martin early in the press tour session for "Game of Thrones," the adaptation of his popular "A Song of Fire and Ice" series of fantasy novels. "I think part of it is the fact that there is relatively little of it out there. Television is full of lawyer shows and medical shows and situation comedies. Fantasy is something that has largely been restircted to books for a long time. The readers of those books, who have their favorite series, are really hungry to see some good fantasy brought to television."

David Benioff, one of the two writers in charge of bringing "Game of Thrones" to the screen, suggested Martin was selling himself short: "It's not just the genre, but it's George's books that are being brought to television."