Lucasfilm announced plans for a new Star Wars trilogy from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss in 2018. The HBO series' final season hadn't aired at that point, meaning excitement was at a high to see the duo travel from Westeros to a Galaxy Far, Far Away.
Like Rian Johnson's supposed trilogy, it never happened, and the duo parted ways with the studio in 2019 over creative differences. Don't feel too sorry for them, though, as they later signed a $200 million deal with Netflix which led to the recently launched 3 Body Problem.
Josh Horowitz (via SFFGazette.com) recently caught up with the filmmakers to discuss the series and asked how they feel about missing out on the opportunity to helm their own Star Wars trilogy (it was set to revolve around the Galaxy's First Jedi).
"I think we got relatively far story-wise with the first one," Weiss confirmed. "We had a basic roadmap for the other two. It was a shame. The truth is, our batting average on things conceived to things actually finished has never been tremendously high and there will always be ones that get away for various reasons. The ones that just aren't meant to be."
"It was sad that was one of them for us," he continued, "but as time goes on, you need to let go of those things because if you don't, you'll drive yourself completely crazy."
Horowitz then asked if there's any awkwardness over the fact Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is now helming a movie which will also travel back into the Star Wars franchise's past to tell the story of, you guessed it, the first Jedi.
Weiss responded to the question, but was clearly uncomfortable (there may indeed be some hard feelings towards Lucasfilm over that). "I love Jim. He's a great dude," he said. "All the best of luck to him."
Lucasfilm can't have been on board with what Benioff and Weiss came up with so the fact they've now enlisted the Logan director to tell a similar story has to sting.
Earlier this year, Benioff finally shed some light on the premise of their trilogy when he said, "We wanted to do The First Jedi. Basically how the Jedi Order came to be, why it came to be, the first lightsaber..."
"[Lucasfilm] ended up not wanting to do a First Jedi story," he continued. "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."
Check out the full interview with Benioff and Weiss in the player below.