“Game of Thrones” creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have announced that they’re leaving their planned “Star Wars” series, Deadline reports
The duo announced their decision 18 months after Disney and Lucasfilm announced that the “Game of Thrones” creators were signed to the project.
What they’re saying: “We love Star Wars. When George Lucas built it, he built us too,” Benioff and Weiss said in a statement, according to The Hollywood Reporter. “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. But 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.”
- “David Benioff and Dan Weiss are incredible storytellers,” Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy said. “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.”
Context: Weiss and Benioff were intended to write and produce a new “Star Wars” film, which was set to be released on Dec. 16, 2020. The duo joined “The Last Jedi” director Rian Johnson as a producer outside of the Skywalker Saga.
“Clearly, it’s a big-fizzle ending for the firecracker-fuse headline from February 2018 when the deal was announced,” according to Deadline. “But the duo’s deal arguably lost some luster during the much-maligned final season of ‘Game of Thrones’ earlier this year as many fans questioned whether the GOT creators had the storytelling chops to handle a Jedi saga.”
Bigger picture: There are other “Star Wars” projects in the works, including “The Rise of Skywalker,” which is due out in December. “The Mandalorian” will hit Disney Plus in two weeks. And there’s a series centered around Obi-Wan Kenobi, featuring Ewan McGregor, for Disney Plus, too.