Last week, it was revealed that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss had signed a multi-million dollar to make TV shows and movies for Netflix. This is a major move, and marks the duo’s entry into the realm of super-producers like Ryan Murphy, Shonda Rhimes and Greg Berlanti.
Almost as soon as the deal was announced, pundits started to weigh in on whether it was a smart investment on Netflix’s part — the exact worth of the deal is a little different depending on where you look, but The Hollywood Reporter’s most recent article on the topic puts it at $250 million. However you shake it, that’s a lot of money.
“Either [Benioff and Weiss] are the next Steven Spielberg or they are the next Michael Cimino,” Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter told CNBC. Michael Cimino, FYI, is a filmmaker who made a huge splash with the critically acclaimed Deer Hunter back in 1978, and then followed it up with the financially disastrous Heaven’s Gate in 1980, a film that seriously hobbled his promising career. “I’d say somewhere in between,” Pachter continued. “They might be good enough to justify the price, but they might not be. Remember, they still have to produce something, and if it’s not great, it isn’t worth it.”
Part of me wants to be sarcastic about that — ‘You’re saying that they might be good or might not be? Wow, what an insight.’ — but I get the point that Benioff and Weiss are largely untested quantities. They produced a huge hit — the hugest hit, really — but can they be in it for the long haul? “The only way to make a deal like this work is if you have multiple shows,” one “top exec” told The Hollywood Reporter. “The bet is that they’ll do another Game of Thrones, and that’s a big bet.”
It’s true that other super-producers earn their keep by making multiple projects. Ryan Murphy, who signed a $300 deal with Netflix, has a whopping 10 shows in production. Shonda Rhimes, who signed a $100 deal with the streaming service, has eight. Game of Thrones was a lightning-in-a-bottle kind of success, and making a $250 million deal in the hope that they’ll produce something as popular is probably overreaching.
But is that what Netflix is doing? The “top exec” seems to think so, but I’m not sure we know enough to say that yet. If I had to guess, I’d say Benioff and Weiss are planning to take a more Ryan Murphy-esque approach to producing, where they oversee several projects rather than focusing on one, as they did with Thrones. That’s really the only way to make these sorts of deals worth it.
UNIVERSAL CITY, CA – OCTOBER 15: Darth Vader speaks onstage during Spike TV’s “SCREAM 2011” awards held at Universal Studios on October 15, 2011 in Universal City, California. (Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images)
Then there’s the Star Wars wrinkle. How, some pundits are asking, can Benioff and Weiss produce enough to justify Netflix’s investment when they’ve committed to making a trio of Star Wars films for Disney? (The movies may or may not be about the Old Republic; nothing’s confirmed yet.) THR has some interesting info on that. According to their sources, Benioff and Weiss are writing a treatment for a new trilogy — meaning they lay out what happens — but are only committed to actually writing the full script for one of the movies. And there’s no word about them directing. That would, in theory, leave them plenty of time to work for Netflix. “It’s not going to be 10 years [until] Netflix sees their first output,” said an anonymous someone familiar with the Netflix deal. “[Benioff and Weiss] have a lot of ambition.”
There might also be a bit of a double standard at work here, too. Per THR, WarnerMedia is close to signing a $500 million (!) deal with J.J. Abrams. That means he would probably create content for HBO Max. Abrams already executive produces Westworld on HBO, and is readying shows like Lovecraft Country and Demimonde for the network. He’s also working on a bunch of stuff for Apple TV+, and oh yeah, he’s directing Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker for Disney. But is anyone wondering if Abrams will be able to devote enough time to WarnerMedia to justify that ridiculous price tag?
The difference, of course, is that Abrams has an established track record of success on multiple fronts while Benioff and Weiss don’t…yet. But I think it’s a little early to be doom-saying. “Netflix is banking on [Benioff and Weiss’] future success,” said Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore. “Things like this often seem expensive, but in retrospect were good deals.” I think we just have to wait and see.
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