‘Game Of Thrones’ Creators D.B. Weiss & David Benioff To Make New HBO Show ‘Confederate’

HBO has officially greenlighted a new show created by the showrunners of Game of Thrones David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. The new show, titled Confederate, is expected to begin production after the last season of Game of Thrones in late 2018 or early 2019.

Confederate has no ties to the medieval fantasy epic despite the many talks of several Game of Thrones spinoff series being in the works.

Weiss and Benioff will serve as showrunners, executive producers, and writers on the new show. Nichelle Tramble Spellman (Justified) and Malcolm Spellman (Empire) will help co-write the series and also executive produce.

Carolyn Strauss and Bernadette Caulfield, both of whom serve as executive producers on Game of Thrones, will executive produce Confederate as well.

Confederate will take place in an alternate universe in which the Confederate army and the southern states won the American Civil War. In this new universe, slavery is still legal and has become a modernized institution. The story will focus specifically on a cast of characters living inside the demilitarized Mason-Dixon zone. This cast includes freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, journalists, the executives of a major slave holding company, and slaves themselves.

“As the brilliant Game of Thrones winds down to its final season, we are thrilled to be able to continue our relationship with Dan and David, knowing that any subject they take on will result in a unique and ambitious series,” Casey Bloys, the president of HBO programing, said in a statement.

“Their intelligent, wry and visually stunning approach to storytelling has a way of engaging and audience and taking them on an unforgettable journey. Confederate promises to be no exception, and we are honored to be adding the talented team of Nichelle and Malcolm Spellman to the mix.”

Benioff and Weiss also added to the statement, “We have discussed Confederate for years, originally as a concept for a feature film. But our experience on Thrones has convinced us that no on 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, and we couldn’t imagine better partners in the world-building than Nichelle and Malcolm, who have impressed us for a long time with their wit, their imagination and their Scrabble-playing skills.”

Game of Thrones‘ seventh season premiered last Sunday. After the seven-episode season, the eighth and final season is expected to premiere in late 2018 or early 2019.