Game of Thrones creators David Benioff and David Weiss’ slavery drama series has been pulled, in news that will surprise precisely noone.
Titled Confederate, the show, which imagined a world in which slavery was legal, prompted huge backlash online when it was announced in 2017, with critics calling it ‘slavery fan fiction’ while pointing out the lack of diversity in the show being written by two white men.
Three years later and the show has finally been given the boot, with HBO president Casey Bloys confirming to TVLine that the network would not be moving forward with the series, so everyone can breathe a sigh of relief.
Confederate was originally described as an alternative fiction where ‘the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, giving rise to a nation in which slavery remains legal and has evolved into a modern institution.’
That gets a big ‘yikes’ from us.
It’s the latest in a long line of setbacks to face writers Benioff and Weiss.
After the last series of Game of Thrones left fans disappointed (like, 1.8 million people signing a petition to remake the show with ‘competent writers’ levels of disappointed), the pair dropped out of attending San Diego Comic Con 2019.
It definitely didn’t help that they admitted to not knowing anything about filmmaking before working on GoT, rubbing fans the wrong way as they said of working with author George RR Martin: ‘We didn’t really have any [experience]. We don’t know why he trusted us with his life’s work.’
The writing duo then walked away from working on a new Star Wars trilogy, saying that they were worried the Disney franchise would detract from other projects.
Luckily, the pair still have a huge deal with Netflix in the pipeline, so we think they’ll be fine.
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