The "Game of Thrones" season 6 plot is in no way affected by fans' criticisms.
It all started when "GoT" director Jeremy Podeswa was quoted by Forbes as he said that outrage over Sansa Stark's fate in season 5 made showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss adjust the "Game of Thrones" season 6 plot.
"[They] were responsive to the discussion and there were a couple of things that changed as a result," Podeswa said.
"It is important that (the producers) not self-censor. The show depicts a brutal world where horrible things happen. They did not want to be too overly influenced by that (criticism) but they did absorb and take it in and it did influence them in a way."
According to EW, however, Podeswa's explanation seemed to be different from what Benioff and Weiss have been saying for years. The "GoT" showrunners clarified that their plans for the "Game of Thrones" season 6 plot is not directed by outsider opinions and even defended the director.
"No. Jeremy is fantastic," Weiss said. "It's hard to know what the context was - whether or not that's exactly what he said or he said something adjacent to that and the words got shuffled around because whoever typed it up liked the way it sounded better."
"The thing that's slightly frustrating is the idea that we're responding to criticism from last year, so therefore we're going to beef up the female roles - that's blatantly untrue," Benioff added. "What happens this year has been planned for quite some time and is not a response."
"We can take criticism - and certainly we've gotten our share of it - but hearing people look at a middle chapter of a story and make claims about the story as a whole ... it's not in any way a response to online criticism, or any other type of criticism."
"I can literally say that not one word of the scripts this season have been changed in any way, shape or form by what people said on the Internet, or elsewhere," Weiss noted.
