Star Wars: Game of Thrones bosses quit films ‘because their ideas were shot down’ by Kathleen Kennedy
David Benioff and DB Weiss quit planned trilogy this week, blaming commitments to Netflix
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Your support makes all the difference.Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss quit their new Star Wars trilogy after their “ideas were shot down” by Kathleen Kennedy and Lucasfilm, a source has claimed.
According to Variety, the pair’s ideas for their trilogy involved exploring the origins of the Jedi and how they came to exist. But Lucasfilm executives began to “see their visions for the films diverge” from Benioff and Weiss during meetings in summer 2019.
This was also around the same time Weiss and Benioff had signed a $250 million deal with Netflix, with the streaming service happy to sign the pair but also allegedly “wary” of their commitments to Star Wars.
In a statement released this week (28 October), Weiss and Benioff announced they had departed their planned trilogy of Star Wars movies.
“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,” they wrote. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”
Kathleen Kennedy, the president of Lucasfilm, said in her own statement that she hoped “to include [the pair] in the journey forward when they are able to step away from their busy schedule to focus on Star Wars.”
But Variety has claimed that the Game of Thrones bosses are merely the latest in a run of screenwriters who have struggled to meld their visions with those of Lucasfilm. Phil Lord, Christopher Miller, Josh Trank and Colin Trevarrow have all been signed up to write and/or direct new Star Wars films at one point or another since 2015, before dropping out.
“Multiple insiders said new ideas were commonly shot down as Kennedy and her team were only looking for people to stick to the company line,” the report claimed.
Weiss and Benioff’s departure from their trilogy, which was due to begin in 2022, leaves the Star Wars franchise with an uncertain cinematic future. Potential new Star Wars movies by Rian Johnson and Marvel Studios boss Kevin Feige remain in development.
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