Game Of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are no longer crafting a new Star Wars trilogy for Disney. The duo have reportedly exited their deal, and the first film of the trilogy that was set to arrive in 2022, is off. The pair released a statement when the news dropped:
“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 […] There are only so many hours in the day, and we felt we could not do justice to both Star Wars and our Netflix projects. So we are regretfully stepping away”.
This news is shocking, but will likely please Star Wars fans who were also not fond of the latter seasons of Game Of Thrones.
Benioff and Weiss took a lot of flak for their handling of the final season especially, and did themselves no favours with a Comic Con cancellation, some ill-timed comments, and a Twitter thread that went viral revealing their inexperience and desire to strip George R.R. Martin‘s source material of its fantasy elements.
They’ll be fine in the long run, as they recently signed a nine-figure overall deal at Netflix, as mentioned above. Consistently noted during these reports are how Benioff and Weiss are stepping away because of how busy that deal is making them. But Colin Trevorrow and Josh Trank also left their respective Star Wars projects but were heavily rumoured to have been fired.
Trevorrow’s exit was widely considered to be down to the overwhelmingly negative reception to his film The Book Of Henry, while Trank’s was because of the “unusual” production of his Fantastic Four movie – he reportedly battled back against constant studio interference and claimed that the final movie we saw was not his vision.
And we all remember Phil Lord and Chris Miller being unceremoniously let go and replaced by Ron Howard on Solo: A Star Wars Story. The lesson is – Disney is not afraid to protect their billion dollar franchise. That may have been the case here. We’ll see. There’s a good chance more will come out regarding Benioff and Weiss’ exit in the near future.
#Peace.Love.StarWars
