While it might seem like the controversy around HBO’s upcoming alternate history drama Confederate would be the natural explanation for why the show hasn’t seen much movement in the past two years, HBO chief Casey Bloys told TVLine on Friday that it’s actually a scheduling issue related to the series’s creators, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. The pair have been swamped, you see, with all the Game of Thrones showrunning and writing several upcoming Star Wars films they have going on. “Dan and David are finishing up the final season [of Game of Thrones] and then they are going to go into the Star Wars universe,†Bloys said. “When they come out of that, I assume they will come back to us.â€
After the network announced Confederate, which imagines a modern-day reality in which the South successfully seceded and slavery was never abolished, many people used the hashtag #NoConfederate during summer 2017 to ask the network not to make the show. Afterward, Bloys admitted that HBO could have “done a better job with the press rollout,†but the network nonetheless hoped “that people will reserve judgment until there is something to see.â€
As it stands today, the future of the show is apparently in the hands of Benioff and Weiss, whose hands are, as we mentioned, extremely full of Star Wars movies. “The delay has to do with [the fact] that they were offered three movies,†Bloys explained to TVLine. “It’s hard to say to someone, ‘You can’t go do Star Wars.’ They love it. It’s a childhood dream. They’ll go do that, remember why they love television and come back.â€