After delivering fans the massively successful Game of Thrones adaptation for HBO, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were tapped by Lucasfilm to develop Star Wars movies, but now that those plans have fizzled, the pair confirm they are no longer interested in telling stories in such established franchises. Their remarks aren’t specific to the galaxy far, far away, as they claimed this sentiment applied to things like James Bond as well. Instead, the pair have recently developed the Netflix series 3 Body Problem, and while this series is an adaptation of the novel of the same name by author Liu Cixin, it doesn’t have the same legacy as some decades-spanning franchises.
When asked by the Inside Total Film podcast about if they have an interest in a return, Benioff admitted, “No, I don’t think so.” He continued, “I think when you’ve got a franchise that’s already so well established, like Star Wars or James Bond or so forth, I think there’s less independence when you come in to try to tell a story that you want to tell and so I think what Dan [Weiss] and I have learned is that it’s more fun for us to start something afresh.”
Benioff added, “Obviously, we’re coming in on the shoulders of [author Liu Cixin] here, he’s the one who created these novels and everything but because we’re the ones adapting them, at least for the English language. We have a lot of flexibility in terms of the story we want to tell and that’s a lot more fun for us than the other version.”
The partnership between the filmmakers and Lucasfilm was reportedly set to encompass multiple movies, with Benioff and Weiss being only some of many collaborators who were announced as developing a movie to then part ways from the studio. Interestingly, Benioff previously explained that the pair planned to make a movie about the early days of the Jedi, which Lucasfilm reportedly wasn’t interested in, only for James Mangold to be announced as developing a movie tackling that subject.
“[Lucasfilm] ended up not wanting to do a First Jedi story,” Benioff confessed to Variety earlier this year. “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.”
Stay tuned for updates on the Star Wars franchise.
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