HBO has received some major backlash across social media after it confirmed that the next project from Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would be a program aptly called Confederate, set in a world where slavery still exists.

According to ABC News, with many slamming the network for making light of the idea of "slavery fan fiction," HBO's president Casey Bloys recently addressed the controversy during the Television Critics Association's press tour, calling the way the decision was delivered a bad idea.

"File this under hindsight is 20/20," he said. "If I could do it over again, HBO's mistake — not the producers' — was the idea that we would be able to announce an idea that is so sensitive that requires such care and thought on the part of the producers in a press release was misguided on our part."

After apologizing for the messy execution, Bloys went on to defend the show and its creators, reassuring folks that it will not tell the expected narrative of slavery times.

"It's not whips and plantations," he said. "They're going to be the difference. My hope is that people will judge the actual material as opposed to what it could be, should be, or might be, and they — and we — will rise or fall based on the quality of that material."

The series, according to the press release, "takes place in an alternate timeline, 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."

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