David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, the writing/producing duo behind HBO’s Game Of Thrones, have stepped away from their planned Star Wars trilogy that was set to move ahead at Lucasfilm for 2022.
The pair’s nine-figure deal to develop content for Netflix was taking precedence over their plans to launch a new trilogy of stories featuring characters entirely separated from Star Wars’ current Skywalker Saga.
“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,” Benioff and Weiss said in a statement to Deadline, who broke the news. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”
Even with the Skywalker Saga ending this December with the release of Star Wars: The Rise Of Skywalker, Lucasfilm and parent company Disney will certainly be keeping the franchise an active concern. The spinoff series The Manalorian, focusing on a bounty hunter making his way through the Star Wars galaxy, will be one of the premier offerings when Disney’s streaming service Disney+ premiers in two weeks. A second series, which will see Ewan McGregor returning as Jedi Knight Obi-Wan Kenobi, is currently being prepped to shoot later next year.
On the film side, The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson has been developing a Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm as well. Johnson’s latest film, the comic mystery Knives Out, opens Thanksgiving weekend and the director currently has no next project officially announced yet. Marvel Studios honcho Kevin Feige also had a well reported meeting with Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy in August where he pitched an idea for a Star Wars feature project as well. It is also possible that Lucasfilm has other feature possibilities in development that have not yet been reported on.
