In a bit of shocking news that broke late Tuesday, Game of Thrones creators David Benioff & D.B. Weiss are no longer making their Star Wars movies.
“We love Star Wars,” the pair said to Deadline, which broke the news. “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.”
Benioff and Weiss cited their new contract with Netflix as the reason why they had to drop out of the franchise.
“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 said. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”
And yet, despite the exit, Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy kept the door open for their return.
“David Benioff and Dan Weiss are incredible storytellers,” Kennedy told Deadline. “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.”
Of course, Benioff and Weiss were the brains behind not just Game of Thrones, but what was expected to be the next live-action Star Wars film after December’s Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker. Whether that means the 2022 release date will go to a Rian Johnson film, a Kevin Feige-produced film, or something else entirely, we do not yet know. But it won’t be Benioff and Weiss’s film, that’s all we know.
We’ll continue to follow this story as it develops and surely hear more as The Rise of Skywalker nears release.