It has been quite a year for David Benioff and DB Weiss, the showrunners behind HBO’s Game of Thrones. There have been some significant highs: they signed a deal worth $200 million with Netflix back in August, and Benioff’s Gemini Man finally hit screens after decades and decades of development hell. The lows, though, may blot out any residual light from those shining moments: The pair, well, didn’t exactly stick the landing when bringing that series to a close back in May, and fan outrage has manifested itself in a number of ways, from petitions demanding that the final season be reshot to their pictures becoming the first results when one googled “bad writers.” Even this past weekend, the pair received a ton of incoming fire for a panel they did at the Austin Film Festival, in which they revealed themselves to be, well, significantly less talented than their fanbase had assumed.
But, hey, at least they had a Star Wars trilogy to look forward to! We say “had” because late on Monday night, news broke (via Deadline) that the pair had exited the project, and their planned trilogy had been scrapped. Why? Well, those shows and/or movies that they have to make for Netflix aren’t going to make themselves, and there’s simply just not enough hours in the day for that! We’re sure the timing of this announcement had nothing to do with that panel. Nothing at all!
Benioff and Weiss gave a statement to Deadline about their departure from the project, emphasizing how much they loved and cared about the franchise before Netflix shoved hundreds of millions of dollars down their gullets:
“We love ‘Star Wars.’ When George Lucas built it, he built us too. Getting to talk about ‘Star Wars’ with him and the current ‘Star Wars’ team was the thrill of a lifetime, and we will always be indebted to the saga that changed everything.”
Lucasfilm head Kathleen Kennedy also gave a quote to Deadline, in which she emphasized that her door is always open for the GOT dudes:
“David Benioff and Dan Weiss are incredible storytellers. We hope to include them in the journey forward when they are able to step away from their busy schedule to focus on ‘Star Wars’.”
So, where exactly does this leave us? Well, Benioff and Weiss have their assorted upcoming Netflix projects to tend to — not including the incredibly controversial Confederate, the now-scrapped HBO series they were working on up until the deal closed — and there’s no real word as to what these will be. Time will only tell if the bad press the pair have received in recent months will give the streaming service buyers’ remorse, and this could potentially be a boon for Kennedy and company, who don’t have to worry about fan ire from another quarter. But it looks like HBO themselves are starting to pull away from Thrones content, given that the network just pulled the plug on the planned prequel series starring Naomi Watts.
On the other hand, it’s looking pretty clear for Star Wars fans on the horizon after, say, 2021. The first of the Benioff/Weiss films was slated to hit in December 2022, and who knows if Disney is going to keep those dates and, say, fast-track Rian Johnson’s new trilogy instead. We imagine that they’re going to focus on streaming at the moment: The Mandalorian already has one season in the can and another on the away, and the Cassian Andor and Obi-Wan spinoff shows will probably fill some scheduling gaps after that. We imagine that we’ll hear more about this in the future, though — remember, there is going to be a Star Wars Celebration next year — and don’t forget, we still have The Rise of Skywalker to look forward to on December 20.