Game of Thrones Showrunners Share How Deep Into Development Their Star Wars Films Got

Games of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are back in the spotlight thanks to  Netflix’s 3 Body Problem, their latest book-to-TV adaptation. However, before Benioff and Weiss landed at Netflix, their career path was set to run through Lucasfilm and the Star Wars franchise. 

As revealed earlier this year, Benioff and Weiss were trying to do a Star Wars movie called The First Jedi, which would chronicle “basically how the Jedi Order came to be, why it came to be, the first lightsaber,” Benioff explained to Variety.  He further added that “[Lucasfilm] ended up not wanting to do a First Jedi story. 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.”

During a recent appearance on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Benioff and Weiss further elaborated about how far into development they were on The First Jedi before Lucasfilm pulled the plug: 

“I think we got relatively far, storywise, with the first one,” Weiss explained to host Josh Horowitz. “We like had a basic roadmap to the other two, and it was a shame. The truth is our Hollywood ratio, or batting average of things conceived to things actually finished has never been tremendously high, and there’s always going to be ones that get away for various reasons, you know. The ones that were never meant to be. And it was sad that was one of them for us. But as time goes on, you just kind of need to let go of those kinds of things, because if you don’t you’ll drive yourself completely crazy.” 

The conversation ventured into the awkward waters of how Lucasfilm has since gone ahead with a Dawn of the Jedi film, which is in active development with Logan and Indiana Jones 5 director James Mangold at the helm.

Weiss got things diplomatic, saying “I love Jim, he’s a great dude. So… all the best of luck to him.” Needless to say, the body language in the video hints that both Weiss and Beinoff have more thoughts on that subject… 

At Star Wars Celebration 2023, Mangold talked about his own vision for the beginnings of the Jedi, and has since teased that words like “Jedi” or “Force” may not be featured prominently in his film: 

“It just came from me thinking about if I were doing one, it seemed to me that most of what they were thinking about doing with movies were either in the present of Star Wars or the future, and what attracted me most was the distant past and how this galaxy formed and how, more specifically, the Force was discovered.”

“It will be before Jedi, meaning you might be experiencing something that might become Jedi,” Mangold replied to the Happy Sad Confused podcast. “Despite the fact that other people make movies other ways, I don’t tend to think people brand themselves before they’ve actually found themselves. So you don’t come up with a name for your organization … ‘Let’s put this big thing on our chests.’ I think that the branding tends to happen later.”

Star Wars: Dawn of the Jedi is in production. 3 Body Problem is streaming on Netflix.