And Benioff and Weiss, for whatever criticisms people want to throw at them for the final season, were experienced writing/producing partners who had successful

And Benioff and Weiss, for whatever criticisms people want to throw at them for the final season, were experienced writing/producing partners who had successfully adapted material before. Benioff is the one who pursued adapting ASOIAF with GRRM (and convinced GRRM that he understood the property and also that it was better suited for premium television, not as a feature film), got the HBO deal, and started working on it in 2006, along with GRRM. He wasn’t just installed by the studio to be the showrunner — he was the guy that worked to get the deal done for 5 years before it even debuted. No one involved in this project appears to have the same level of involvement. Instead of someone like David Benioff bringing a property to the network to adapt and develop, Amazon spent out the ass in a bidding war over the rights and then hired people to run the show. That can obviously work just fine, but in general, it works better when the showrunners and producers are the ones that pursued the material and sold it to the network (or steamer, in this case).