The Force won’t be with them: David Benioff and D.B. Weiss exit Star Wars

Enlarge / David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have opted to focus on their lucrative development deal with Netflix. (credit: Jeff Kravitz/HBO)

Former Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will no longer be developing the next Star Wars film trilogy for LucasFilm, Deadline Hollywood reports. Instead, they'll be focusing on developing new films and series for Netflix, part of a lucrative nine-figure deal they signed in August with the streaming giant.

"We love Star Wars," Benioff and Weiss told Deadline Hollywood. "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."

Benioff and Weiss signed onto Star Wars back in February 2018, before the much-maligned (by fans) final season of Game of Thrones aired on HBO earlier this year. They had been developing a series called Confederates for HBO, a fictionalized alternative history of the US where the South won the Civil War and slavery remained legal. The series was tabled, ostensibly due to scheduling conflicts rather than in response to an online outcry over the controversial premise. Then came the backlash against the GoT finale, even sparking an online petition with 1.75 million signatories calling for a remake. (As we noted in our review of the finale, that's not how any of this works.)

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