Back in February 2018 it was announced by Lucasfilm that the duo behind HBO’s Game of Thrones, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, were set to helm a series of Star Wars movies. However, just a couple of short years later, the duo exited development on the project. Little was revealed about what the duo’s Star Wars films were going to centre on, but now Weiss and Benioff have revealed that and why they exited the project.
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In February 2018, Benioff and Weiss were announced to be helming a series of Star Wars films for Lucasfilm and those films were planned to be the next theatrical Star Wars releases following 2019’s The Rise of Skywalker, the first film of which was planned for a 2022 release. During the time of the announcement, the duo were showrunning the biggest TV series in the world, Game of Thrones, which had skyrocketed in popularity, reached mass critical acclaim, and the duo were gearing up for the release of the incredibly and wildly anticipated eighth and final season of the series which bowed in 2019.
Most Star Wars fans were elated with the news at the time, believing the duo were the right guys to map out a a series of Star Wars films given their success with Game of Thrones. Some fans soured on the idea of the duo helming those films once the eighth season of Thrones released and just a few months later, Benioff and Weiss were no longer working on a Star Wars film. Some fans believed that the duo were let go due to the reaction to the final season of Game of Thrones, though this was never reported and just seemed to be an idea conjured up by some parts of the fandom, and others believed they left after taking a lucrative $250M deal with Netflix in the Summer before their departure. According to the duo, they exited the films as Lucasfilm no longer wanted to tell the story they wanted to, and the story they’d been working on for a number of years. The duo told The Hollywood Reporter:
“We had a very specific story idea in mind, and ultimately they decided that they didn’t want to do that. And we totally get it. It’s their company and it’s their IP, but we weren’t the droids they were looking for.” – David Benioff
The duo told Deadline in October 2019 that they were stepping away as there wasn’t enough hours in the day to work on their Star Wars films and develop projects for Netflix, so they regrettably walked away from Star Wars. The Hollywood Reporter shared that the duo were having second thoughts about continuing their Star Wars efforts due to a “toxic fandom”, something the duo were likely hyper aware of due to the backlash they received after Game of Thrones season eight and saw how their friend Rian Johnson was treated by some Star Wars fans following the release of The Last Jedi.
The THR article from 2019 mentioned that Lucasfilm president, Kathleen Kennedy, was very unhappy with the duo inking the Netflix deal, just as they were supposed to start working on their first Star Wars film. Kathleen Kennedy was reportedly not convinced that the duo could handle more than one project at a time, splitting their time between Star Wars and Netflix, as the duo refused to work on their Star Wars film during the production and release of the final season of Game of Thrones.
Despite past reports and even a statement from the duo in 2019, they’re currently now saying that they exited the project as Lucasfilm no wanted to produce their idea…so, what was the idea? The duo have revealed that their Star Wars films would’ve focussed on the first ever Jedi and how the Jedi Order came to be.
“We wanted to do The First Jedi. Basically how the Jedi Order came to be, why it came to be, the first lightsaber.” – David Benioff
If that sounds familiar, it should, James Mangold of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny was announced in April to be writing and directing a “Dawn of the Jedi” movie which would follow the first ever Jedi. In addition, David S. Goyer revealed that Lucasfilm asked him a few years ago to develop a “scriptment” for a film that focused on the origins of the Jedi. It seems as if Lucasfilm have wanted or at least toyed with the idea of producing a Jedi origin movie for a many number of years and chances are we’ll see some incarnation of it, whether it’s a Mangold movie, or a Disney+ series, or another filmmaker hops in the directors chair.
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