The former chief lawyer for The Pokémon Company says fan projects are more likely to be taken down if they get press coverage and start making money.
23.02.2024 - 22:11 / polygon.com / David Zaslav / David Benioff
We may keep hearing new details about why the ending of HBO’s Game of Thrones was disappointing forever — or at least as long as the show’s creators, David Benioff, and D.B. Weiss are still working. In an interview with The Wall Street Journal while promoting their new series, Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, the two mentioned they wanted to finish Game of Thrones off with a series of movies, but HBO and AT&T had other ideas. Much, much worse ideas.
The showrunning duo said they wanted to finish off the last two seasons of Game of Thrones as three movies, instead of the 13 total episodes we ended up with. While this might not have fixed many fans’ complaints of a rushed ending, it seems HBO had a different reason for nixing the idea: its name. According to Benioff and Weiss, the executive team reminded them that they were making shows for the “Home Box Office” not the “Away Box Office.”
But while this juicy bit of information is yet another fascinating insight into the very strange ending of HBO’s biggest series, it isn’t even the most baffling and dispiriting reveal in the interview.
That honor belongs to the person who apparently suggested Benioff and Weiss film Game of Thrones vertically, so it would be easier to watch on phones. The comment came from an executive at AT&T, the then parent company of Warner Bros., which owns HBO. The company also reportedly discussed creating mini-episodes of the show that would be more “snackable” — so shorter and easier to watch for mobile viewers.
Most recent discussions of Warner Bros. and HBO have revolved around the decisions made by David Zaslav, who took over as CEO after the company merged with Discovery in 2022. Since then, Zaslav has radically cut down on the company’s emphasis on the Max streaming platform (which he oversaw the renaming of) and increased its focus on theatrical distribution and reality show content. More controversially, the company has also decided to shelve several movies, like Batgirl, Salem’s Lot, and Coyote vs Acme, while selling streaming rights for other movies to competitors like Netflix.
But all this dredging up of ridiculous meetings and requests by Benioff and Weiss is a pretty good reminder that Warner Bros. management has made questionable decisions for a long time. Considering moving HBO’s flagship show into a mobile-friendly format or making bite-sized episodes may sound ridiculous, but it makes sense when you have a phone company trying to get the most out of its struggling entertainment branch. Exactly why AT&T would assume its customers couldn’t rotate their phones is a different, more difficult question.
Even if the studio now known as Warner Bros. Discovery is still on shaky ground, with shelved movies and a Friday
The former chief lawyer for The Pokémon Company says fan projects are more likely to be taken down if they get press coverage and start making money.
Here’s a minor win for fans of Good Things who also subscribe to Max: the Studio Ghibli collection will remain on streaming for the foreseeable future.
Peter Moore, the former vice-president of Microsoft’s interactive entertainment business division who oversaw both the original Xbox and Xbox 360, has offered some fascinating insight into the current gaming landscape and the potential future of the industry.
With Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth and Square Enix working on the final installment in the Remake trilogy, there are a lot of questions. How will it end? Will it include more content and characters from the Compilation of Final Fantasy 7? Whatever the result, it’s confirmed that the world will be “rebuilt” to accommodate the Highwind.
While some reports suggested that the entire Trilogy would be exclusive to the PlayStation 5, that turns out to not be the case. The fact that Square Enix and Sony have an exclusivity deal for the franchise has frustrated many Xbox players who insist the games should also be made available on their console. While the latest release, , won't be played on a Series X|S any time soon, that doesn't mean the remakes won't ever land on Microsoft's consoles.
Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth producer Yoshinori Kitase says there would be crucial differences in the newly released sequel had it not been developed exclusively for PS5.
Update: The author of the original article from The Washington Post has clarified that the entire Final Fantasy 7 Remake trilogy is not confirmed to be completely exclusive to PlayStation. Said article was amended after we had reported on it.
Sony has confirmed it's struck a deal with publisher Square Enix to make the Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy a PlayStation console exclusive.
Sony has secured the complete Final Fantasy 7 remake trilogy as a console exclusive.
Don't expect any of the games in the Final Fantasy 7 Remake series, including the recently-released Rebirth, to come to Xbox, as Sony has secured the trilogy as a PlayStation console exclusive.
The Final Fantasy VII Remake project trilogy will be console-exclusive to PlayStation, according to Sony Interactive Entertainment vice president of second- and third-party content ventures and strategic initiatives Christian Svensson.
There’s a lot to love about Final Fantasy 7 Rebirth, and its open world setting is surely high on that list. On top of being massive and incredibly varied across its many different regions, the entire map is also entirely seamless, which means you’re never hit with a loading screen when traveling from one area to the next (unless, of course, you’re fast traveling). Interestingly, however, according to producer Yoshinori Kitase, the game’s open world design wouldn’t have been quite so impressive if it hadn’t been developed as a platform-exclusive title.