David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the two blind squirrels who stumbled upon entertainment history’s biggest nut when they decided to pitch a television adaptation of a relatively unknown series of books that quickly became the biggest cultural phenomenon in maybe ever, surprised the world once again this past Monday when they announced that they would be abandoning their proposed Star Wars trilogy in favor of a recently-inked overall deal with Netflix. The duo, now one of the hottest tickets in town thanks to the success of Game of Thrones, gave little explanation for their unexpected departure beyond a short statement declaring, “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.”
It’s difficult to find anything in the way of a detailed explanation, which is understandable. Disney (who, in case you have been living under a Dewback lizard for the past few years, owns Star Wars) and Netflix are two of the biggest giants in entertainment, and they’re notoriously tight-lipped about what goes on under the hood, including production troubles and behind-the-scenes dust-ups. But one particularly interesting piece of information has come out, which is that Benioff and Weiss’ proposed trilogy would have focused on the origins of the Jedi.
Image via HBO
The duo had apparently been working on a treatment since signing their Star Wars deal in February of 2018, with the intent to fully draft at least one of the three movies themselves. There are absolutely no details about their treatment available at the time of this writing, and it’s entirely likely that nobody will ever know what they had planned. (Although it’s equally possible that Star Wars fans will be reading a leaked PDF of it and debating its merits at this time next year.) But it’s interesting to think about what the Game of Thrones masterminds would’ve done with a brand new set of Star Wars prequels. That phrase may induce involuntary eye-rolling, but a set of films laying out the discovery of the Force and the beginning of the Jedi Order and its conflict with the Sith, told with the same grim spectacle of GoT, doesn’t exactly sound terrible.
But who knows? We’ll never see what Benioff and Weiss had in store. Maybe the infamously risk-averse Disney balked at the idea of taking Star Wars in a darker direction. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time the House of Mouse has dismissed a filmmaker from a flagship franchise over “creative differences” – Star Wars has given the Mandalorian-armored boot to Josh Trank, Phil Lord & Chris Miller, and Colin Trevorrow; and Marvel infamously parted ways with Edgar Wright over Ant-Man.
Image via HBO
However, it bears pointing out that despite all of their success, Benioff and Weiss have only worked on 73 episodes of television in a creative partnership that spans an entire decade. And Game of Thrones experienced a notable decline in both critic and viewer response virtually the instant they ran out of source material and began scripting episodes entirely on their own, ending in a divise final season that soured many longtime fans. On top of they signed a massive $250 million development deal with Netflix this August, a year and a half into developing their proposed Star Wars project with Disney. Netflix didn’t shell out a quarter of a billion dollars to wait around – the expectation with an overall deal of that size is that the persons involved will begin overseeing multiple projects as quickly as possible. (The Hollywood Reporter notes that Ryan Murphy signed a deal with Netflix for $300 million less than 2 years ago and is already underway on 10 different projects.) So it’s entirely likely that Benioff and Weiss, who have openly been on the hunt for a secure overall deal since completing Game of Thrones, simply bit off more than they could chew. Or maybe the final season of GoT convinced them to step away from huge fandoms for a while.
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October 31, 2019 at 06:45AM
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Benioff and Weiss 'Star Wars' Movie Reportedly Explored the Origins of the Jedi - Collider.com
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