A Game of Thrones-themed charity campaign designed to raise money for refugees has ended in abject failure, raising just 29% of its target cash.
Rescue Has No Boundaries, a tie-up between GoT stars including Lena Headey, Maisie Williams and Sophie Turner, had hoped to rake in $1 million over the course of season 6.
But attempts to extract money from viewers over a politically contentious issue faltered at the first hurdle after fans trashed campaign videos for their high-handed, sanctimonious tone.
An initial video, published to YouTube, was rejected by fans – who gave it more than 10,000 “downvotes” – more than three times the amount of supportive “upvotes”.
Critics also tried to call out the actors in the comments section, but panicked staff at the International Rescue Committee charity axed the comments section when viewers started to criticise them.
Instead, the campaign ended with just $290,909 in the bank – most of which was raised in the first few weeks:
After a flood of donations, helped along by bribes to visit a pre-season viewing party, practically all donations stopped.
Since then the project has been becalmed – and went one week without raising a single dollar.
Efforts to get IRC staffers to donate off their own backs also ended in failure.
The charity appears to have underestimated how contentious the issue of refugees would be with viewers – many of whom are Europeans from communities under strain because of thousands of new entrants.
IRC advocates governments accepting many more migrants – and has made demands for the US to accept 100,000 (it’s current target is 10,000) and Europe to take more than 500,000.
A fan from Sweden, which alongside Germany is under most pressure from an influx of migrants, said: “Easy to tell people what to do when you are rich and live in gated communities. The migrant crisis is out of control in Europe”.
Another suggested: “If they want to help the refugees then take them in their own homes and donate their paychecks. Meanwhile in America and elsewhere we have our own problems.”
After Game of Thrones Season 6 started up, the stars of the campaign lost interest too.
Maisie Williams, whose profile has soared on the back of her star turn as Arya Stark this season, spent world refugee day promoting her line of t-shirts on Twitter, and did not mention the campaign at all.
I can't believe how many t-shirts have sold already!
Get yours here: https://t.co/Hn3QEzIQBM
THANKYOU, THANKYOU! pic.twitter.com/4vCwZy9iqm— Maisie Williams (@Maisie_Williams) June 20, 2016
Lena Headey, who plays Cersei also did not make any public statements.
Every actor involved refused requests from Heat Street to answer questions about their involvement in the campaign.
Thomas Wlaschiha, who plays Jaqen H’ghar in the series, was initially prepared to talk about the subject, but pulled out after being sent a list of questions.
