Fans who are hoping to question David Benioff and D.B. Weiss at the 2019 San Diego Comic-Con will never have the chance two see the two at the Game of Thrones panel. The event organizers have announced the two showrunners, along with the director and co-producer Miguel Sapochnik, would be no show at the convention.
There are reports Benioff and Weiss have pulled out from the convention. When HBO updated the panel lineup, five previously listed names were erased, including Weiss, Benioff, and Sapochnik.
Iain Glen, who played Jorah Mormont, and actress Nathalie Emmanuel, who played Missandei, would also not make it at the SDCC. However, HBO didn't give the reason for their pullout or why the attendance has changed, per IGN.
Benioff and Weiss' nonappearance came as no surprise with the criticisms they continuously receive. Fans have been criticizing Game of Thrones Season 8 and even did a petition for a remake, which gathered 1.68 million signatures, to be made by "competent writers."
According to The Sunday Morning Herald, there are even fans who want to punish Benioff and Weiss at the panel by sounding the "shame bell." It is when Septa Unella (Hannah Waddingham) rang a bell and repeatedly saying the word "shame," while Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) was doing the "walk of shame."
Benioff and Weiss have been heavily scrutinized and the target of Game of Thrones Season 8 backlash. They are expected to be asked with a lot of burning questions about the show's final season at the SDCC. But, it was also their chance to see how people would receive them after the controversy.
From the looks of it, any possible questions and criticisms about Game of Thrones Season 8 would be thrown to Jacob Anderson (Grey Worm), John Bradley (Samwell Tarly), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) instead. They would be the ones attending the panel, along with Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth), Conleth Hill (Varys), Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), and Isaac Hempstead Wright (Bran Stark).
To recall, Coster-Waldau made headlines when he attended Con of Thrones in Tennessee, where he defended Weiss, Benioff, and the show per se against the backlash. "For anyone to imagine or to think that the two creators of the show are not the most passionate, the greatest, the most invested of all, and to for a second think that they didn't spend the last 10 years thinking about how they were going to end it is kind of silly," he said, via IndieWire. And also know that they too read the comments. ... We worked our asses off to make the best show we could for the ending."
