The eighth and final season of Game of Thrones left many fans so angry they created a petition to re-do it, and creator George RR Martin has finally spoken out.
In short, he’s not happy.
Martin, who wrote the original books the series is based on, has revealed that he’s a bit annoyed by all the negativity around the final season, and has basically told fans to calm their hype on the toxicity.
Speaking on the podcast Maltin On Movies, he said: ‘The internet is toxic in a way that the old fanzine culture and fandoms – comic fans, science fiction fans in those days – was not.’
‘There were disagreements,’ he went on to say. ‘There were feuds, but nothing like the madness that you see on the internet.’
Game of Thrones fans were furious about the direction the final season was going in, with a Change.org petition to ‘remake Game of Thrones Season 8 with competent writers’ drawing over one million signatures.
This prompted Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark on the show, to hit out at fans, calling the move ‘disrespectful.’
Speaking to The New York Times, she said: ‘People always have an idea in their heads of how they want a show to finish, and so when it doesn’t go to their liking, they start to speak about it and rebel.’
She added: ‘All of these petitions and things like that – I think it’s disrespectful to the crew, and the writers, and the filmmakers who have worked tirelessly over 10 years, and for 11 months shooting the last season.
‘Like 50-something night shoots. So many people worked so, so hard on it, and for people to just rubbish it because it’s not what they want to see is just disrespectful.’
Not all Game of Thrones fans reacted in this way. In fact, when GoT fans learned that Kit Harington, who plays Jon Snow on the show, checked himself into rehab for stress and ‘personal issues,’ they raised over £40,000 in support of the ‘charity Mencap, which Kit has been supporting for years’.
Though fans were wildly divided over the show’s finale, a GoT prequel with a working title of Bloodmoon is in the works.
Filming is due to start in June, but no release date has been set yet. HBO Programming President Casey Bloys told the Hollywood Reporter earlier this month they’re in no rush to release the prequel.
He said: ‘What I’m not doing is working backwards by saying, “this has to be on the air by this date.”‘
He added: ‘I don’t want to speculate any dates.’
There are some pretty big names attached to the upcoming show, including Naomi Watts, Josh Whitehouse, Naomi Ackie and Jamie Campbell Bower.
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