With their new show 3 Body Problem, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Weiss are back in the conversation. Do they still have an image problem?
David Benioff and Dan Weiss shot to fame as the creators of Game of Thrones, the biggest TV show of the 2010s and maybe the biggest fantasy show ever. For years, they were lauded as storytelling geniuses. Then came the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones, which took several twists and turns that left many fans very, very unhappy. Ever since, a cloud has hung around the names of Benioff and Weiss, at least in certain corners of the Game of Thrones fan community.
That’s part of the reason I’m interested in watching 3 Body Problem, a big new show coming to Netflix where Benioff, Weiss, and Alexander Woo all serve as showrunners. Based on the Remembrance of Earth’s Past trilogy by Liu Cixin, 3 Body Problem looks plenty interesting by itself; it’s a brainy, ambitious sci-fi drama about humanity’s first contact with an alien species. But I’m also curious to see whether fans at large are ready to love a show made by David Benioff and Dan Weiss, or if the angry narratives left over from the end of Game of Thrones will persist.
Those narratives about Benioff and Weiss — that they have no talent, that they wanted to move on from Game of Thrones to do something else, that they didn’t care about the story — have always been at odds with what people from the cast and crew have said about them. We got another example of that when Alexander Woo talked to The Hollywood Reporter about his decision to join Benioff and Weiss as a showrunner on 3 Body Problem. Before taking the job, he consulted with Game of Thrones writer Bryan Cogman about what he was getting into:
“Bryan said, “You won’t find a single person who worked on Game of Thrones with a single bad thing to say about either of them. They’re genuinely great, decent people.””
Obviously, people were mad at Benioff and Weiss when the final season of Game of Thrones aired because they didn’t like how that season turned out, not because they had anything against the two personally. But online, personal attacks and professional criticisms have a way of merging to where one is basically passed off as the other, which creates weird impressions for bystanders. Benioff and Weiss mostly unplugged from the whole thing, but many of the people upset by their work on the final season of Game of Thrones are still around. How will they react now that Benioff and Weiss are back in the conversation?
