D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, the creative minds behind Game of Thrones, were supposed to set up a new Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm. Now they reveal more about the failed project
In February 2018, exciting news made the rounds in the galaxy far, far away. None other than D.B. Weiss and David Benioff, who had created the series sensation of the 2010s with the Game of Thrones adaptation, were to tell an epic story in the Star Wars universe.
The plan was for the two to write and produce a new trilogy. Around a year and a half later, in October 2019, the duo turned their backs on Star Wars and Lucasfilm had to bury another failed film project. But what story would they have told? Weiss and Benioff now reveal this themselves
The failed Star Wars trilogy by the Game of Thrones makers would have told of the first Jedi
In an interview with The Hollywood Reporter, Benioff reveals that he wanted to get to the origin of the Jedi with Weiss:
We wanted to tell [the story of] the first Jedi. Basically, it was about how the Jedi Order came to be, the first lightsaber …
But then Rian Johnson threw a spanner in the works with his Star Wars episode, as Weiss jokingly adds:
‘We were annoyed as hell when [Rian Johnson] called his movie The Last Jedi. He completely ruined the obvious title for what we were working on.
But why did the movie, or the trilogy, fail? Benioffs has an explanation.
In the end, [Lucasfilm] didn’t want to make a story about the first Jedi. We had a very specific story idea in mind, and ultimately they decided they didn’t want to do it. And we totally understand that. It’s their company and their intellectual property. We weren’t the droids they were looking for.
While Weiss and Benioff have moved on to make the sci-fi series 3 Body Problem at Netflix, Lucasfilm has finally returned to the idea of the project. Indiana Jones 5 director James Mangold is now directing a Star Wars film that deals with the beginnings of the Jedi and the Force
