Two weeks back, HBO chose to announce the premiere date for season 7 of Game of Thrones with an epic stunt: they melted a giant block of ice on Facebook Live. The premiere date was hidden inside.
Unfortunately, it didn’t turn out as epic as they’d hoped. The ice was melting for an hour-and-twenty minutes, and the live feed crashed multiple times. Plenty of fans were none too happy with the experience:
Whoever is in charge of the @GameofThrones S7 premier date reveal is getting a visit from Septa Unella. @HBO @WiCnet @CulturessFS #GoTS7 pic.twitter.com/K3nZPwUmQu
— I. A. Melton 💁🏽♀️🤦🏽♀️🤷🏽♀️ (@ijamelton) March 9, 2017
Me watching a block of ice melt on @GameOfThrones Facebook page! #GOTs7 #Winteriscoming pic.twitter.com/Ve2XvNCu90
— Tony Santiago (@sir_tone00) March 9, 2017
It ends up that HBO showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were none too thrilled with the event either, as Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) relayed to The Daily Beast.
"I spoke to Dan [Weiss] and David [Benioff] about that and they were like, “Oh god… That’s embarrassing.”"
On paper, this probably sounded like a great idea — the fire-meets-ice aspect dovetailed nicely with season 7’s poster design, after all.
But in practice…of course Benioff and Weiss were embarrassed. Coster-Waldau summarized the viewer reaction:
"Everyone was like, “What’s going to happen?” “What’s going to happen?!” “It’s melting!” “It crashed!” “Oh my god!” It’s like, just walk away… just walk away. It’s just a date!"
Note, of course, that we can’t know if Benioff and Weiss were actually involved in the choice to melt a block of ice for over an hour while people watched — the marketing department may have done its own thing. But to whoever was in charge, maybe choose something thinner this time. We tried to melt a couple of ice cubes as we watched along, and even that was slow going.
Still, Coster-Waldau doesn’t think the debacle will cost Game of Thrones any viewers.
"You know, I was actually thinking, “Is there going to be a backlash and people will think, ‘Fuck you guys for that!’” but that’s really happened with every time the show kills off a major character: Never again! Fuck you! I’m never going to watch this show! and, you know, they keep coming back."
We hate that he is right. Game of Thrones returns July 16th.
David Benioff and Dan Weiss. (Photo by Amy E. Price/Getty Images for SXSW)
h/t Harper’s Bazaar