Game Of Thrones: 10 Shocking Revelations From Benioff & Weiss's Q&A
"It was basically a con job to HBO".
Following the culmination of HBO's Game of Thrones, series creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss retreated from public life to, in their words, "work on other things". This was 6 months ago, and despite the division between the shows millions of fans over its conclusion, they'd yet to see fit to answer any of the major questions.
Until now.
They might have canceled their Comic-Con appearance to avoid this exact thing, but the pair were at the Austin Film Festival this weekend to promote their latest works. They were asked, amongst other things, a myriad of questions on Game of Thrones. From getting the show green-lit by HBO, to why author George R.R. Martin trusted them with his life's work, to even what impact the internet had on their writing.
The answers will add yet more fuel to the raging bonfire that is Game of Thrones discussions post-Season 8, but they're essential reading for absolutely anybody who watched the finale and wondered where it all went wrong.
Thankfully, twitter user and bona fide living legend @ForArya chronicled all their responses and it's her tweets which are referenced throughout. Give her a follow, and seven blessings.
10. They Didn't Even Try To Understand The Books
That Game of Thrones was at its best when it was following the books is not something that's really up for debate. The themes and ideas prevalent throughout are what made it feel so unlike anything else on TV, and they're the sort of ideas that could only flourish with the freedom that comes from writing a book.
But trying to somehow condense those 5000+ pages (at the time, anyway) into scripts and seasons was always going to be a colossal ask. Thus, fans have wondered for years how the writing team prioritized what stories or characters or moments were integral to the overarching narrative, and which were expendable. Their solution... they didn't.
"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"