Game of Thrones creator George R R Martin has seemingly spoken out about the backlash to the HBO adaptation of his book series, describing it as "toxic".
Following on from the ending of the HBO fantasy epic last month which fans were on the whole unhappy about - even going as far as to sign a petition calling for season eight to be remade - Martin appeared on the Maltin on Movies podcast hosted by Leonard Maltin to decry the toxic nature of fan culture.
"The Internet is toxic in a way that the old fanzine culture and fandoms — comics fans, science fiction fans in those days – was not. There were disagreements. There were feuds, but nothing like the madness that you see on the internet."
Here's just one teaser that came out ahead of Game of Thrones' final season:Martin - who is currently still writing his version of the events of Game of Thrones after David Benioff and DB Weiss went ahead of the books with HBO - also took the time to talk about the planned spin-offs when it came to Game of Thrones, saying it might be unlikely that they hit the heights of the original series.
"The scale of Game of Thrones' success has — reaching all over the world and invading the culture — it's not something anyone could ever anticipate, not something I expect to ever experience again," he explained.
HBO overseer Bob Greenblatt has already confirmed to Deadline that there's at least a prequel in the works: "There's a prequel in production. But, just a pilot so that we can see if it has all the goods and is it worthy of going forward. We're just trying to be really thoughtful about how to expand this universe if it makes sense, and not, like I said, kill the golden goose," he said.