‘GoT’ season 8 hate: See the plot to poison David Benioff and DB Weiss
If you spent the 2010s keeping up with all eight seasons of Game Of Thrones, chances are you’re pissed about how it all ended. The whole world witnessed as one of the most critically acclaimed TV series gained hate from most of its fans (and even some people who didn’t even watch the series) practically overnight.
The adaptation of George R.R. Martin’s epically long fantasy series A Song of Ice and Fire was an undeniable success right until the series surpassed the books and had to come up with their own story to finish off the TV series.
While George R.R. Martin gave the show producers David Benioff & DB Weiss an outline of what the upcoming books were going to look like, the series’ final season still took the show from being on (dragon) fire to being a dumpster fire.
After the final season, many people felt disappointed if not angry about the producers’ decisions (Where to start? Arya killing the Night King out of nowhere? Dany torching a city of innocents out of nowhere?). There was so much hate for the final season, someone actually hatched an alleged Game of Thrones-style plot to poison showrunners David Benioff & DB Weiss!
That said, the poisoner seemed to have another show (and another show creator) in mind when he put his plan into action. Though it may not have involved Tears of Lys or a poison necklace, we have all the intriguing details below.
Benioff & Weiss’s epic fail
Although the Game Of Thrones final season what’s David Benioff & DB Weiss’s most famous mistake, the duo have been involved in more unsuccessful deals. Right after Thrones ended, Benioff & Weiss were supposed to start working on Confederate, another HBO high-budget series.
Confederate was supposed to be a story from an alternate universe in which the U.S. South won the Civil War, and hence slavery never ceased. Unsurprisingly, this story caused outrage among the black community and, consequently, the show got canceled.
Once those plans got tossed away, Benioff & Weiss were offered the chance to work with Lucasfilm to create three new Star Wars movies. The duo declined the offer citing schedule constraints as they were meant to release a series with Netflix. Finally, Benioff & Weiss were announced as the producers for The Three-Body Problem.
Yoozoo’s ordeal
Netflix set off to adapt the sci-fi trilogy The Three-Body Problem to a TV series and recruited David Benioff, DB Weiss, and Alexander Woo to carry the project. This adaptation meant bad news for some – back in 2015, Yoozoo had announced they had acquired the rights and both a movie and a videogame were going to be released.
Unfortunately, Yoozoo had to reschedule the release date twice only to give up and hand over the project to Netflix. After announcing The Three-Body Problem in September, Netflix faced a backlash from a group of Republican Senators who claimed to be worried the series would normalize China’s alleged human rights abuses, specifically reported Muslim internment camps in Xinjiang.
The author of The Three-Body Problem, Liu Cixin, was asked about the mass internment of Uighurs in Xinjiang in an interview with The New Yorker. He commented: “Would you rather that they be hacking away at bodies at train stations and schools in terrorist attacks? If anything, the government is helping their economy and trying to lift them out of poverty.”
This raised concern in the U.S. about Liu’s approval of the way the Chinese government has acted. In response, Netflix clarified Liu’s involvement in the production of The Three-Body Problem doesn’t mean Netflix, or Benioff & Weiss for that matter, agrees with Liu’s political views.
How Lin came to be poisoned
On December 16, Lin Qu was reportedly poisoned after drinking a cup of pu-erh tea. Lin Qu is the chairman of Yoozoo and one of the credited producers of The Three-Body Problem.
The senior executive of Yoozoo films, Xu Yao, was identified by the Chinese media as the main suspect. While there isn’t an official statement from either Xu or Lin, disputes among Yoozoo’s executive ranks have been confirmed, which could be the motive behind the attempted murder.
Given Benioff, Weiss, and Lin’s tumultuous background, some speculate the poisoning could’ve been another instance of the hate these producers have received for their questionable choices when it comes to production. However, there aren’t enough details about the incident to jump to any conclusions just yet.
