Author: Trafficblast

Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff And D.B. Weiss were in Austin, Texas over the weekend to discuss the recently-ended show on a panel during the Austin Film Festival. While the session was not recorded, the details of their discussion were live-tweeted by one attendee, who captured the pair ruminating on how or why they were trusted with such an enormous production.

The Twitter thread, by user ForArya, details many of the discussion points brought up by Benioff and Weiss. In the wake of the much maligned final season of Game of Thrones, the revelations in this thread have been received with interest by the show’s viewers.

Weiss explained how, in their first meetings with series creator George R.R. Martin, they realized that they didn’t actually have any experience working in television. He admitted that the two of them “don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work” (Martin, for his part, has said that he feels free since the series ended). Similarly, Weiss says that the pilot they made for HBO was full of “basic writing mistakes”, but that the show likely went forward into production because of foreign pre-sales.

Weiss described Game of Thrones as “expensive film school” for himself and Benioff, both of whom reckoned with their inexperience when it became clear that they had “no idea how to work with costume designers”. He also admits that, while filming an extra 100 minutes of scenes to bolster first season episodes that were running short, they realized that they’d made several episodes without Robert and Cersei Lannister ever sharing a scene, despite the characters being married.

The thread continues on with several similar revelations, including the fact that the pair tried to write every episode because “(they) didn’t know better” and that they intentionally removed fantasy elements to appeal to a wider audience. Benioff and Weiss also acknowledged avoiding fan reactions and feedback.

Not everything revealed in the thread is negative, though – the pair talked about how working with the same crew over a long period led to everyone improving, and discussed a few successfully subversive moments from the show’s run.

In the wake of Game of Thrones ending (and breaking records for Emmy nominations), Benioff and Weiss signed an enormous deal with Netflix, effectively killing off their next show with HBO. Today, the news broke that the pair was stepping away from their proposed Star Wars trilogy, citing scheduling issues.

The final season of Game of Thrones will release on DVD, Blu-Ray and 4K on December 2, 2019.

Disney is reviving the Pirates of the Caribbean movie franchise, and now the media giant has selected two writers for the job.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, Disney has hired a pair of writers for the job, one of whom might come as a surprise. The first is Ted Elliott, which comes as no surprise given he wrote the 2003 original Pirates movie and some of its sequels. The more surprising hire is Craig Mazin, who recently won acclaim for creating the HBO show Chernobyl. Mazin also wrote the comedies Scary Movie 3 and 4, as well as The Hangover: Part II.

It appears the new Pirates movie is going through another draft revision, as Disney originally hired Deadpool and Zombieland writers Rhett Reese and Paul Wernick to pen the script for the new Pirates movie. They left the Pirates movie earlier in 2019.

It sounds like it’s still very early days for the new Pirates film, as Elliot and Mazin are said to be first working on finding a direction for the movie, and then the story.

Johnny Depp famously played Captain Jack Sparrow in all the Pirates movies, but whether or not he would return for the new one is unknown.

The Pirates movies are big-time blockbusters. The latest one, 2017’s Dead Men Tell No Tales, made $795 million at the box office, and stands as the second worst-performing of them all, which says something about how much of a juggernaut the franchise is. Across the five releases dating back to 2003, the Pirates franchise has made around $4.4 billion at the box office.

Disney’s new Star Wars TV show, The Mandalorian, contains a big Star Wars spoiler in its first episode, apparently. According to The New York Times, the series premiere will feature a “dramatic Star Wars universe spoiler.”

The report has no other details on what the spoiler might be. What is known, however, is that The Mandalorian takes place after the events of Return of the Jedi, following the collapse of the Galactic Empire.

It was also confirmed this week that Disney will not release episodes in advance to media as it will do with some of its other Disney+ shows (Netflix also releases advance “screeners” to media for some of its shows). Disney said it won’t make episodes of The Mandalorian available early in an effort to help to contain “any surprises and plot twists.”

Disney has shown select media pieces of episodes of The Mandalorian, but never a full show.

The Mandalorian premieres November 12 on Disney+. Unlike most Netflix shows, episodes of The Mandalorian will be released on a weekly basis, not all at once.

Game of Thrones star Pedro Pascal plays the titular Mandalorian on the show, with a cast that also includes Giancarlo Esposito (Breaking Bad) and Carl Weathers (Rocky). The comedian Bill Burr, who does not like Star Wars, also has a role in the show.

The next Star Wars movie, meanwhile, is The Rise of Skywalker. The movie comes to theatres about a month after The Mandalorian premieres, arriving on December 20.

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It’s a big day for Star Wars news, as Disney has confirmed that Game of Thrones creators D.B. Weiss and David Benioff are no longer directing their previously announcement Star Wars trilogy of movies.

“We love Star Wars,” they said in a statement to Deadline. “When George Lucas built it, he built us too. Getting to talk about Star Wars with him and the current Star Wars team was the thrill of a lifetime, and we will always be indebted to the saga that changed everything.”

The first Star Wars movie in the new trilogy from Weiss and Benioff was expected to premiere in 2022, but that is no longer happening. According to Deadline, Weiss and Benioff said their scheduled filled up–thanks to their lucrative new Netflix deal–and they were no longer able to make the movies.

“David Benioff and Dan Weiss are incredible storytellers,” Lucasfilm boss Kathleen Kennedy said in her own statement. “We hope to include them in the journey forward when they are able to step away from their busy schedule to focus on Star Wars.”

Earlier this year, Weiss and Benioff signed a deal with Netflix (said to be in the nine-figure range) to make new movies and TV shows for the streaming network. It appears the pair’s commitments to Netflix are partly the reason why their new Star Wars trilogy is no longer moving ahead.

“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,” Weiss and Benioff said. “So we are regretfully stepping away.”

The new Star Wars trilogy is not the first casualty related to Weiss and Benioff signing with Netflix. Their controversial HBO show, Confederate, was also killed off after the pair signed for big money with Netflix.

When Lucasfilm hired Weiss and Benioff for the new Star Wars movies in 2018, Kennedy said the pair are “some of the best storytellers working today.” She said their new movies were expected to “break new ground and boldly push Star Wars in ways I find incredibly exciting.”

While the new Star Wars trilogy fro Weiss and Benioff is finished, Disney is still moving forward with another trilogy of new Star Wars films from The Last Jedi director Rian Johnson. There is no word on if Lucasfilm plans to greenlight a new trilogy of Star Wars films to replace the three movies that Weiss and Benioff were expected to make.

The next Star Wars movie is this December’s The Rise of Skywalker, which wraps up the entire Skywalker Saga that began back in 1977.

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