People are not happy with the next HBO show from the Game of Thrones team

Winter is coming, but it is also coming to an end.

Once the current season of Game Of Thrones finishes its seven-episode run, and the eighth and final season ends after just six episodes, we really don't have much time left before the 'winner' is announced. The showrunners of the series David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have been with Game of Thrones since the starting point, more or less deciding themselves which parts of George RR Martin's novels to stay faithful to, and which to edit for the sake of making more entertaining television. However, with the show coming to a close, they are already looking to the future... an alternative future, in fact, with their follow-up HBO show, Confederate. The set-up for the story, which had originally be conceived as a feature-length movie but morphed following the success the duo had with HBO, will be surrounding the events leading to the third American Civil War, where the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution. While the idea sounds like it is ripe to reflect back a dark shadow of today's political landscape, a lot of folk took to the internet to vent their frustrations about the central problem as they see it.

The fandom for the new #HBO show #Confederate is gonna be Tragic. Can you imagine how much harmful imagery they're gonna produce? pic.twitter.com/P9xbxfQQtv

— Zora Neale Hustlin' (@MarsinCharge) July 19, 2017

It is exhausting to think of how many people at @HBO said yes to letting two white men envision modern day slavery. And offensive. https://t.co/xsxWJ6FHUv

— roxane gay (@rgay) July 19, 2017

Critics of HBO's "Confederate" don't think slavery should be trivialized for the sake of a fantasy TV series https://t.co/IWkj2S6xKN

— The New York Times (@nytimes) July 21, 2017

Like even if Confederate is critical of current day racism, do we need another series about the suffering of POC, written by white men?

— splatussy daddy (@kamilumin) July 19, 2017

Every pop culture writer I know, upon being asked about HBO's Confederate. pic.twitter.com/Pa5MeMe4eK

— Kayleigh Donaldson (@Ceilidhann) July 19, 2017

While the show is still years away from hitting the small screen, both Benioff and Weiss have already released a statement, claiming they knew the idea for the show was going to court controversy, telling Vulture "We all knew it was coming in one form or another." Nichelle Tramble Spellman, one of the writer/executive producers on the series, also stated: “I do understand their concern. I wish their concern had been reserved to the night of the premiere, on HBO, on a Sunday night, when they watched and then they made a decision after they watched an hour of television as to whether or not we succeeded in what we set out to do. "The concern is real. But I think that the four of us are very thoughtful, very serious, and not flip about what we are getting into in any way. What I’ve done in the past, what Malcolm has done in the past, what the D.B.s have done in the past, proves that. So I would have loved an opportunity for the conversation to start once the show was on the air." Weiss pretty much told Vulture that HBO had given them free reign to make whatever they wanted next so, with that in mind, why make something like Confederate, something that would guarantee such a reaction? He responded: “We threw a bunch of things around, but, look, we’re fortunate to be in the position that we’re in currently with the show, knock wood. And we knew there was the opportunity to do another show with HBO, which we were very, very happy about because they’ve been great people to work with. And we knew that we could do something easy, and that there are many, many easy things that we could’ve done. "But we also knew that we could use the fact that the show is successful and the fact that this gives us a certain amount of leverage to attempt something difficult, that wouldn’t be easy, that would be challenging, that would cause us all sorts of problems that something easy wouldn’t. And we think the difficult idea was much, much more valuable to us, and much more worthwhile to us than any of the easier ideas would be." "So we thought that using the current show as a springboard to do something that couldn’t happen any other way seemed like a worthwhile way to spend that capital. Whether or not it turns out to be that, we’ll have to wait and see.”