David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have left their planned Star Wars trilogy

Depending on what you thought of Game of Thrones Season 8 this will be either great news or bad.

David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who were the creators and writers for the Game of Thrones TV show have walked about from their deal with Disney Lucasfilm to make a Star Wars trilogy.

The reason they are giving is that their nine-figure deal with Netflix doesn’t give them enough time!

Here is the joint statement they gave to Deadline:

As one of the rumours for them not taking time to do a couple more seasons for Game of Thrones (despite HBO wanting them to) was because of the Star Wars trilogy, this just feels like a kick in the teeth.

“David Benioff and Dan Weiss are incredible storytellers,” said Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy. “We hope to include them in the journey forward when they are able to step away from their busy schedule to focus on Star Wars.”

I was one of the many who felt they totally dropped the ball in the final season and rushed the hell out of everything. Makes me kind of glad they won’t get their hands on Star Wars and make that even more of a mess than it sadly seems to be going (Dear The Mandalorian, please give us some decent Star Wars again!). It seems they are always just looking for the next big deal.

The pair appeared at the Austin Film Festival and finally spoke about the final Game of Thrones season and it really does sound like they just did not have a clue. These details were shared on Twitter.

Benioff reportedly said they wanted to remove as many fantasy elements from the show as possible because “we didn’t just want to appeal to that type of fan” but wanted to expand the fan base to “mothers, NFL players”.

Benioff and Weiss reportedly described the production of the show as being like “10-year drunk party” and complained about “giving up” 10 years of their life. They expressed surprise that they were entrusted with the show with so little experience.

Two months before the pilot was to air, the episodes were averaging 39 minutes and HBO made them write and film 100 minutes of scenes to meet their contractual obligations. For example, they added a scene with Robert and Cersei – and realized that there had been no scene with them. They said those extra minutes helped them understand the characters better.

They were asked why they chose to write all the episodes by themselves: “Because we didn’t know better.” David said HBO wanted them to hire other writers and they decided to have Bryan Cogman, their assistant, write four episodes.

Benioff reportedly spoke about their meeting with series author George RR Martin where he questioned their “bona fides”, saying “we didn’t really have any” and “we don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work”.

Weiss joked how the in the early days they found writing dialogue awkward. “In every scene, we were three lines away from Monty Python and the Holy Grail,” he said.

Asked whether they tried to “boil down” the major elements of the books they said they didn’t as “the scope was too big”, saying it was “about the scenes we were trying to depict and the show was about power”.

How do you feel about them no longer making a Star Wars trilogy?