‘Game of Thrones’ Showrunners Discuss Scrapped Star Wars Project
Once upon a time, the future of Star Wars seemed to be in the hands of Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
In 2018, Lucasfilm announced that it had agreed to a deal that would see the award-winning screenwriters write the next chapter in Star Wars history and move the franchise away from the Skywalker saga.
While expectations for Benioff and Weiss’ Star Wars entry were high, by 2019, plans for the film had already been canceled.
“We love Star Wars. When George Lucas built it, he built us too. 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,” they told Deadline at the time.
“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,” the statement continued. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”
The Duo Wanted to Go Back to the Beginning
In subsequent interviews, the screenwriting duo revealed that they wanted to take Star Wars back to the dawn of the Jedi. At the time, Lucasfilm was uninterested in the idea.
“[Lucasfilm] ended up not wanting to do a First Jedi story. We had a very specific story idea in mind, and ultimately they decided they didn’t want to do that. And we totally get it. It’s their company and their IP, but we weren’t the droids they were looking for.” Benioff explained.
Benioff and Weiss Were Going to Make a Trilogy
In a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Weiss and Benioff revealed that their plans for Star Wars actually called for a trilogy of films and that their story was pretty well developed.
“I think we got relatively far, storywise, with the first one,” Weiss said.
“We had a basic roadmap to the other two, and it was a shame. The truth is our Hollywood ratio, or batting average, of things conceived to things actually finished, has never been tremendously high, and there’s always going to be ones that get away for various reasons. The ones that were never meant to be. And it was sad that was one of them for us. But as time goes on, you just kind of need to let go of those kinds of things because if you don’t, you’ll drive yourself completely crazy.”
In the end, it sounds like the Binoff and Weiss Star Wars films were just not meant to be. Interestingly, however, Lucasfilm recently announced that James Mangold’s upcoming Star Wars film will explore the Dawn of the Jedi. I guess good ideas never really die.
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