HBO has apologized after a scene in Game of Thrones featuring the disembodied head of George W. Bush on a pike was uncovered. HBO told the website io9: “We were deeply dismayed to see this and find it unacceptable, disrespectful and in very bad taste”; the scene will be removed from future releases of the episode on DVD.
The producers of Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, said, “What happened was this: we use a lot of prosthetic body parts on the show: heads, arms, etc. We can’t afford to have these all made from scratch, especially in scenes where we need a lot of them, so we rent them in bulk.”
Season one of Game of Thrones had an estimated budget of $50-$60 million. The murdered-Bush scene was uncovered at a particularly impolitic time–shortly before the broadcast, tonight, of 41, a documentary with extensive access to George H. W. Bush.