Author: Trafficblast

Game of Thrones showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff’s controversial HBO TV show, Confederate, is no longer a priority for the network, it seems. Programming boss Casey Bloys told Deadline the show is “not on the front burner” right now for HBO. That’s all Bloys had to say on the subject.

Confederate was announced in 2017. The show takes place in an alternate version of the United States where the Confederates won the American Civil War, thereby allowing slavery to continue. Benioff and Weiss were announced as the program’s showrunners, which is the same role they had for Game of Thrones.

The show’s announcement was met with swift criticism over its subject matter. HBO stood behind the show, saying it had faith in its creators to “approach the subject with care and sensitivity.” Benioff, meanwhile, said the outrage was “a little premature” because the show was so early in production.

“We haven’t written any scripts yet,” he said. “We don’t have an outline yet. We don’t even have character names,” he said. “So everything is brand new and nothing’s been written. I guess that’s what was a little bit surprising about some of the outrage. It’s just a little premature. You know, we might f**k it up. But we haven’t yet.”

Production was scheduled to begin after Game of Thrones ended, which it now has, but the program was delayed after Weiss and Benioff took jobs with Disney to work on a new trilogy of Star Wars films.

In February this year, Bloys told TV Line that the delay of Confederate comes down to Weiss and Benioff taking the Star Wars job, not because of the controversy.

“Dan and David are finishing up the final season [of Game of Thrones] and then they are going to go into the Star Wars universe,” Bloys said. “When they come out of that, I assume they will come back to us.”

The first of the new Star Wars films from Weiss and Benioff is scheduled to hit theatres in 2022, so it could be a very long time before Confederate is released.

Weiss and Benioff are now visiting studios in an attempt to secure a new “overall” deal. WarnerMedia, which owns HBO, is among those speaking with the pair about a new deal, though it remains to be seen which company Weiss and Benioff may sign with.

For more on Game of Thrones, you can check out GameSpot’s recap of the series finale, “The Iron Throne,” in the video embed above.

New Coke, the controversial flavor of Coca Cola released in 1985 and removed from sale quickly, is coming back this year for a promotional release tied to the upcoming season of Stranger Things.

Stranger Things Season 3 is set in 1985, the same year New Coke was released. New Coke will be featured in “several” episodes during Season 3, and it’s not being added for the sake of making an extra buck. “It was one of the first ideas in our Season 3 brainstorm. It was the summer of ’85, and when you talk about pop culture moments, New Coke was a really big deal,” creators Matt and Ross Duffer told The New York Times. “It would have been more bizarre to not include it.”

New Coke was introduced in April 1985, and it was removed from sale after just 79 days in the wake of a community outcry over the flavor, eventually replaced by what would be called Coca-Cola Classic. That same controversial flavor, New Coke, is now returning with the same exact recipe.

Additionally, the Duffer Brothers worked with Coca-Cola on a new advertisement that they directed, It showcases familiar Stranger Things characters drinking New Coke in a movie theatre. You can see the ad in the video embed above.

“One thing that makes Stranger Things so special is its commitment to authentically portraying the decade in which the show takes place,” Coca-Cola North America boss Stuart Kronauge said. “When we heard that Season 3 would be set in the summer of 1985 and they wanted to integrate New Coke, we knew we had an opportunity to revisit that time period in a fun and unexpected way that would also allow us to be part of one of this year’s most anticipated pop culture moments.”

You can read more about the partnership between Netflix and Coca-Cola here on the Coca-Cola website.

All the main cast of Stranger Things return for Season 3, along with Princess Bride star Cary Elwes who plays the sleazy politician Mayor Kline. There’s also the offspring of some ’80s stars; Jake Busey, son of Point Break star Gary Busey, will play a journalist named Bruce, while Maya Thurman-Hawke (daughter of Uma and Ethan) is set to play a character named Robin.

For more on Stranger Things Season 3, which premieres in July, check out the first trailer and this early teaser and poster, plus GameSpot’s look at everything we’ve learnt about the season so far.

Game of Thrones is over. The final episode of the final season aired Sunday night with “The Iron Throne.” And it was controversial. People created a petition asking for a remake with new writers. Now, HBO’s top programming boss, Casey Bloys, has responded to the feedback from the series finale.

He told Deadline that he was not surprised by the reaction. He said there was no way for creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff to craft an ending that everyone enjoyed, given how passionate the show’s fanbase is. “I think based on online reaction, which you do have to take with a grain of salt, it does seem split and I think that’s about right–some people are going to love it, some people are going to hate it. But the point is, everybody is feeling really passionate about it,” he said.

Bloys said Game of Thrones fans had their own hopes and wishes for how each character’s story would wrap up. However, Weiss and Benioff had a plan for a long time, and “they did it the way they thought fit as creators,” Bloys said, adding that he thought the pair did a “spectacular job.”

“They landed a big plane, which was not easy. You are never going to keep everybody happy, but I don’t think that’s what they were trying to do,” he said.

In a separate interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Bloys said Benioff and Weiss never intended to try to make everyone happy with their Game of Thrones ending.

“You just have to accept that not everybody is going to agree with the choices,” he said. “For a show this big and this epic and this sprawling, [Benioff and Weiss] have to make choices. What’s great about the show is it made people feel a lot of things–positive and negative. A lot of people had invested in characters and hoped for certain things and wanted to see certain twists. There’s probably a little bit of mourning going on that the show is over. I get it, I understand it: It’s a big show and people really invested a lot in it–and that says a lot about what the show did. People really cared about it.”

Fans and critics have commented that the final season (or two) sped along too quickly, and in turn, some of the key moments lacked weight or significance. Bloys said Weiss and Benioff had a plan for how they wanted to end the story “for a long, long time.” Bloys admitted that he would have liked Weiss and Benioff to make five more seasons, but Weiss and Benioff had a different vision.

“They’ve had a plan that they wanted to do and this made sense to them,” he said. “They made this decision a long time ago and they’re doing it exactly how they planned to do it. They made that decision a long time ago. But no, I’m not aware of any conversations that anybody thought it was crammed or anything like that.”

While not everyone might have loved the Game of Thrones finale, it was a ratings juggernaut. More than 19 million people tuned in, which set new records for the series and HBO overall. For more on the episode, check out GameSpot’s video recap in the embed above.

Sony has provided a new sales update for God of War PS4–and it’s huge. The title has now sold more than 10 million copies, according to a slide from Sony’s recent investor day briefing.

The 10 million sales was shown to demonstrate the strength of Sony’s owned franchises across platforms. As you can see, God of War franchise sales have grown across their entries on PS2, PS3, and PS4. The same is true for the Uncharted and Last of Us franchises.

It’s not clear if the God of War (or other games mentioned in the graphic) count copies sold in console bundles, but that seems likely. God of War launched in April 2018 and became the PS4’s fastest-selling exclusive game ever.

For more on God of War, you can check out the GameSpot Audio Logs episode where game director Cory Barlog breaks down one of the most impactful scenes that almost didn’t happen. Check it out in the video embed above.