At first this article reads like your typical anti-piracy screed. It rants about how 10x more people watched GoT illegally (confusing them with lost sales) and ends with how downloading movies can get your credit card stolen.
The middle of the article however, destroys the author’s case.
Time Warner (owning company of HBO) CEO Alan Bewkes stated in 2013 how becoming the most illegally streamed show in history was “better than an Emmy” and that torrenting ultimately led to more paid subscriptions.
“We’ve been dealing with this for 20, 30 years—people sharing subs, running wires down the backs of apartment buildings. Our experience is that it leads to more paying subs. I think you’re right that Game of Thrones is the most pirated show in the world and that’s better than an Emmy.”
The CEO of Time Warner, who knows more about the finances of his own show than ForeverGeek writer Tom Llewellyn, championed piracy and said that it brought them more subscribers rather than nearly destroying the show as the article claims.
Needless to say, Tom forwent a rebuttal in favor of writing how you can get malware from downloading it…
Anti-Piracy Propaganda: 0 Truth: 1
The hilarious thing is how their own bungling of the last season cost them the Star Wars gig. Maybe if they’d actually put in some effort instead of half assing it, they’d have gotten the job. But then again, the show was on a downward spiral since the end of Season 4, and Dumb and Dumber’s only talent was adapting the books really well (and even then, they still fudged details), so I suppose this was bound to happen.
Dumb and Dumber’s only talent was adapting the books really well
Honestly, I want more Hollywood writers who are good at adapting books, instead of hating the source material and doing a terrible job winging it.
I can’t count the number of TV shows ruined by Hollywood writers usurping the universes from multi-million dollar and very successful source material, just to create their own shitty version themselves. In fact, it’s much easier to adapt source material, so I don’t even understand why they don’t do it out of pure laziness. If they could just drop their fucking egos for a bit, they could be as famous as D&D.
Another recent example of a horrible adaptation of a massive franchise is what Paramount did to Halo with their show. I can’t understand why they keep hiring writers that actively hate the source material and are only interested in taking existing stories and mangling them into their own shitty “vision”. It’s like Hollywood either hates writers who have actual passion for the franchises they’re adapting, or they can’t find them, which can’t be the case since these are beloved universes with millions of fans, many of whom are bound to be writers eager to work on an adaptation. They always hire talentless hacks interested in nothing more than a paycheck and doing what they want, not what the fans want. It’s infuriating.
Witcher, Foundation, The Stand, Y: The Last Man, Wheel of Time, recent Star Trek, Rings of Power, Legend of the Seeker… the list goes on and on. Sandman is only good because Neil Gaiman is keeping a tight leash on the series.
And then they cancel the rest that were turning out good, like The Expanse.
