While the Game of Thrones series finale was met with polarizing reception earlier this year, the showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, have a bright future ahead of them post-Westeros. It was announced last year that the duo are working on their own Star Wars trilogy, and they recently signed an astounding five-year deal with Netflix for which they could earn as much as $300 million.
However, now that David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have hopped from HBO to Netflix, it’s possible this may impact how much work they’re doing on the Star Wars franchise. According to The Hollywood Reporter, the men are currently writing the treatment for their Star Wars trilogy and are committed to fully writing at least one of those movies.
Beyond that, though, it remains to be seen if they’ll write the other two installments, as was the original plan, or if they’ll be involved with this arm of the Star Wars franchise beyond writing. When it was officially revealed they were tackling what was vaguely described at the time as a Star Wars film series, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss would also produce.
While you’d think that could still be the case even if they only end up writing one Star Wars movies, perhaps this deal with Netflix now prevents them from contributing as producers. Or maybe something has just shifted on the writing front where now that the men are partnered with Netflix, they have to divert some of their focus from Star Wars to the streaming service.
A source who spoke with THR said that Netflix’s brass were informed about David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’ Star Wars schedule, but aren’t concerned, as they weren’t expecting the duo’s first output for 10 years. So with that mindset, one would think that these men would ideally have enough time to pen all three of these Star Wars movies, but perhaps enough things have changed that now they just want to get things rolling and then pass the proverbial ball off to someone else.
As things stand now, the Benioff/Weiss trilogy is the next phase of the Star Wars film series after The Rise of Skywalker comes out later this year. The following three movies will be released on December 16, 2022; December 20, 2024; and December 18, 2026.
And let’s not forget that this isn’t the only new Star Wars trilogy officially on the way. The Last Jedi’s Rian Johnson is also working on his own trio of movies that will move past the Star Wars legacy characters, similarly to what David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have planned.
There is also reportedly a Knights of the Old Republic movie being written by Avatar’s Laeta Kalogridis, and this could be the first entry of a new trilogy. It had been rumored that the Benioff/Weiss trilogy could be set in the Old Republic time period, but unless new information comes to light, it sounds like Kalogridis’ movie is completely separate from whatever it is they’re plotting out.
Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more updates about what’s happening with Star Wars on both the big and small screens. In the meantime, find out what’s coming out to a theater in this galaxy for the rest of the year in our 2019 release schedule.
