Game of Thrones has come and gone, but not without the long-lasting impact that has left fans of the series (and the books) furious at how the show ended. Supposedly, the fan backlash of the divisive eighth and final season even reached Disney, who allegedly pulled the Star Wars trilogy away from showrunners Weiss and Benioff, to which they had been announced as penning the stories for.
Now, even after all the disappointment, anger, and sadness, Benioff and Weiss have struck a deal with Netflix for a multi-million dollar deal to write new and original content for the streaming service. However, in more recent news, it turns out Benioff and Weiss have appeared at the Austin Film Festival this past weekend and addressed Game of Thrones questions and criticism directly. What follows is the detailed accounts for Twitter user @ForArya, who was there in the room tweeting live what was being asked, and what these writers had to say in response. And honestly, their responses make you wonder how in the heck they managed to get any work in entertainment at all.
To start, Benioff, who’s best known for writing the screenplays for X-Men: Origins Wolverine, and Gemini Man, along with DB Weiss (who wrote only one episode of Its Always Sunny In Philadelphia) begin detailing how they approached A Song of Ice and Fire creator George R.R. Martin with their pitch for wanting to do the show.
David is describing the pre-meeting with GRRM who was questioning their bona fides and “we didn’t really have any.” We had never done TV and we didn’t have any. We don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work.”
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
It is abundantly clear that Benioff, who has had no prior experience penning a show for TV, and Weiss, who only did one episode of a popular TV show, had no experience, nor the vision for a show of this size. How they managed to get this writing gig will forever remain a mystery and continue to confuse and infuriate me.
“We don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work”
-David Benioff
They talking about the pilot and their friends who they let watch their first attempt at a pilot. One of the people was Craig Mazin (wrote Chernobyl) Scott Frank and Ted Griffin. He acknowledged that the first pilot was basic writing mistakes.
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
As it turns out, the first go at the pilot had mistakes that were considered “basic” and admitted that they do not know why they (HBO) moved forward with the show at all. Perhaps HBO knew they could make money off of it, but as to how Weiss and Benioff managed to stay writers on the show is beyond their own comprehension.
They acknowledge that they have no idea why after such a dismal pilot why they went forward. “Everything we could make a mistake in, we did.” Script, casting, costume.
They think HBO went forward bc they had a lot of foreign pre-sales on the series.
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
Other tweets from @ForArya outline in full-detail that D&D (David and Dan) knew next to nothing about the books, the characters, or the world they occupied. Apparently, these two were so disconnected from the franchise, that they wanted to ‘remove as many fantasy elements as possible’, as they did not want to appeal to those types of fans, and instead wanted to reach the more generic demographics, like moms and football fans.
Dan wanted to remove as many fantasy elements as possible bc “we didn’t just want to appeal to that type of fan.” They wanted to expand the fan base to people beyond the fantasy fan base to “mothers, NFL players”…
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
When asked if they tried to get the elements of the books down on paper for a proper translation to the TV screen, or to put it more directly- when asked if they tried to understand the books’ major elements, they flat out said “no”, and that they did not even try.
Did you really sit down and try to boil the elements of the books down? Did you really try to understand it’s major elements.
No. We didn’t. The scope was too big. It was about the scenes we were trying to depict and the show was about power.
— Needle & Pen (@ForArya) October 26, 2019
Yikes, it’s amazing that there were any good episodes of Game of Thrones at all. Hard to believe that D&D managed to put all this together themselves. Oh wait, they didn’t. As it turns out, when asked about their process, these two knuckleheads revealed that the scripts were divide and that the writers didn’t work together in the same room.
The remainder of the tweets are all along these lines, where it appears that all of the fans’ worst fears were realized all along. D&D didn’t care about the show, they got tired of it in the end because it took too long to get to the conclusion, they didn’t read the books, they didn’t understand the world of ASOIAF, they tried to remove as many fantasy elements as possible, and they avoided audience/fan feedback because “Dan doesn’t see the value of considering other people’s reactions” and “Dave acknowledged that he googled the show and it upset him“.
It truly is mind-blowing to think that anything clever came out of these two chuckleheads, and in all honesty, I think nothing did. The show’s success was purely based on the actors, the crew, George R.R. Martin most of all, and next to nothing from the showrunners. Their attitude and choices resulted in a lot of missteps, and a huge let down in what should have been an epic finale to one of the greatest shows to hit modern television (dare I say “golden age”?).
Perhaps House of the Dragon will step in and be the epic show we deserve, and perhaps we will continue to be lucky with big franchises like Star Wars recognizing that these two just aren’t a fit for them. We may have suffered through Season 8, but we dodged a bullet with Star Wars. We can only be so lucky…
