‘Game of Thrones’ Showrunners Break Silence on Backlash, Why They Turned Down ‘Dragon’ Money

David Benioff and Dan Weiss are opening up about the reaction to Game of Thrones season eight, and also explain why they turned down a lifetime of franchise mailbox money from their hit show’s prequels and spinoffs.

In this week’s Hollywood Reporter cover story, the duo break their five-year, in-depth interview silence to discuss their new Netflix sci-fi epic 3 Body Problem, which they created along with True Blood writer-producer Alexander Woo. The producers discuss their shelved Star Wars movie, their short-lived Confederate idea, their 3 Body producer’s bizarre Breaking Bad-inspired murder, and the challenges and pressures surrounding their new show.

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Some of their comments on the Thrones front include their reaction to the blowback from the show’s 2019 final season.

“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 says of season eight. “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.”

The duo have run into fans in real life since Thrones ended. These encounters, they say, have gone fine. “There’s an underlying decency when people acknowledge you as a person and vice versa,” Weiss says. “There’s something that happens in the transition from human interaction to online that pushes things in a specifically aggro direction.”

When Benioff and Weiss wrapped Thrones, many fans assumed they deliberately rushed the show to an early conclusion. They had actually said since season two that they planned on making roughly seven seasons (whether this was ultimately the best strategy or not). Another common assumption is that they ditched Thrones to make more money elsewhere. One of their little-noticed decisions goes against that idea: As the creators of Game of Thrones, Benioff and Weiss were contractually guaranteed producer credits on all future Thrones spinoffs — a lifetime of franchise mailbox money for doing nothing on House of the Dragon, for starters. And they turned it down. Nobody does this.

“HBO was kind of confused,” Benioff says. “I remember their lawyer saying, ‘But it’s just money, we’re just going to pay you.’ ”

Adds Weiss, “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.”

Read THR’s full article for the rest of the story about Benioff and Weiss’ dramatic post-Thrones journey.

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