There was a time when David Benioff and Dan Weiss could do no wrong. Game of Thrones was one of the biggest shows on television, receiving widespread acclaim and countless awards; perhaps most crucially, it was also loved by fans.
Unfortunately, the eighth and final season proved incredibly divisive. Several creative decisions upset viewers, leading to demands for a remake and the dubious honour of Game of Thrones now grossing many a "worst TV finales ever" list.
Talking to The Hollywood Reporter, Benioff and Weiss acknowledged that not everyone loved the final season and said they've largely tried to avoid the online debate.
"You always hope everyone’s going to love anything you do and it would’ve been great if 100 percent of people loved it, but they didn’t," Benioff tells the trade. "You can get so bogged down in public opinion that you spend your whole life googling things and trying to find people who felt one way or the other way."
Adds Weiss, "Even super positive feedback makes you feel weird and teeth-grindy and on edge. There’s a drug quality to the feedback, and as soon as we went cold turkey - the last time I googled myself was in 2013 - the ambient stress level in our lives dropped by about 50 percent overnight."
As for how their encounters with fans have gone since ending Game of Thrones on such a divisive note, Weiss says, "There’s an underlying decency when people acknowledge you as a person and vice versa. There’s something that happens in the transition from human interaction to online that pushes things in a specifically aggro direction."
Later in the interview, the duo revealed that HBO offered them lifetime producer credits on all future Game of Thrones projects regardless of their involvement. On the cable network's end, the idea would be to make it seem as if those spin-offs had their seal of approval or creative input; Benioff and Weiss, however, weren't interested.
"HBO was kind of confused," Benioff recalls. "I remember their lawyer saying, ‘But it’s just money, we’re just going to pay you.’"
Weiss chimed in to explain, "I don’t think there is such a thing as free money. For us, if our name is on it, especially that, while being completely detached and uninvolved, it felt like the strain that would come with that hands-off approach - with its success or failure or anything in between - was not worth it."
They haven't watched House of the Dragon and don't seem particularly keen to return to Westeros after signing a $200 million deal with Netflix (which is understandable). After season 8, some fans will be pleased to hear that, while others will surely wish the duo was still telling stories in the world created by George R.R Martin.