Game of Thrones showrunners directed Leslie Jones’ new comedy special
By Dan Selcke
With their work on Game of Thrones done, everyone is wondering what showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss will do next. At one point, they were signed up to make a new Star Wars trilogy, but that fell through. Next we heard, they’d signed a very lucrative development deal with Netflix, although we don’t expect to see the fruits of that deal for some time.
It ends up that their first post-Thrones project is something no one saw coming: Benioff and Weiss directed a comedy special for Saturday Night Live veteran Leslie Jones, as she revealed on her Twitter:
Jones has been a Game of Thrones superfan for a long time — her live tweets of the episodes are to be treasured — so this is a really fun pairing.
The special itself is called Time Machine. “Leslie Jones is all about having fun,” reads the logline. “Through the years that fun has encompassed wild times, crazy experiences, celebrity encounters and a few awkward mishaps. Now older, and enlightened, the comedian imparts her hilarious wisdom on all ages. Strap in, because you’re headed on a wild, side-splitting ride from young adulthood to the present with Leslie Jones.”
And obviously she opens by screaming “Dracarys”:
Time Machine will air on Netflix, but as Deadline notes, the special is not part of the Netflix deal Benioff and Weiss signed back in August; they were planning to do it even beforehand. Still, it makes for a nice segue.
I imagine that after working on Thrones for the past decade and change, working with Leslie Jones on a comedy special was probably a nice, comparatively relaxing project for the pair.
Time Machine drops on Netflix on January 14.
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