I like the Malazan books a lot, but c'mon, Erikson falls short in many, many areas when compared to Martin. His characterization is comparatively weak, his writing style is overly dense and obfuscatory, he can't tie up plot threads nearly as well as Martin can, his dialogue is mediocre and sounds very samey from character to character, and his world (while certainly epic and interesting) lacks the gritty, realistic, immersive grounding that Martin brings to Westeros.
Eh, I'm not to worried about the budget. Most of the books are dialogue scenes, with little in the way of flashy hordes of orcs or magical fireballs. If HBO could do Rome (which needed a huge attention to detail for sets and costumes, something ASOIAF won't have to be as picky about), they can do Martin's series. Plus, they're filming in New Zealand, which'll be a lot cheaper.
