HBO CEO Richard Pleper (left) alongside D.B. Weiss and David Beinoff in January. Photo by Kevin Winter/Getty Images for AFI
Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are getting ready for life after Westeros. After GoT wraps its final season next year, the duo will go on to develop a new drama series called Confederate—set in an alternative timeline where the South won the Civil War, HBO announced.According to the press release, the series takes place right before the Third American Civil War (the North must've botched the second war in this timeline, too). Slavery is still legal in the Confederacy and has grown into a "modern institution," and the series follows characters on "both sides of the Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone.""We have discussed Confederate for years, originally as a concept for a feature film," Benioff and Weiss said in the release. "But our experience on Thrones has convinced us that no one provides a bigger, better storytelling canvas than HBO. There won't be dragons or White Walkers in this series, but we are creating a world."Beinoff and Weiss will serve as showrunners, with Malcolm Spellman of Empire and Nichelle Tramble from Justified and The Good Wife coming onboard to write and executive produce."We couldn't imagine better partners in world-building than Nichelle and Malcolm, who have impressed us for a long time with their wit, their imagination and their Scrabble-playing skills," Beinoff and Weiss continued.The show's announcement was met with immediate backlash from people who think that, uh, maybe a pair of white dudes aren't the best team to helm a series about modern-day slavery, and that a bunch of Confederate imagery might be a little incendiary given our current political climate, and HBO and Beinoff and Weiss have yet to address the concerns. Let's just hope they don't pull an Amazon and slap a bunch of Confederate flags on the subways for advertising.Disclaimer: VICE Media has two shows on HBO, VICE News Tonight and VICE
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