D. B. Weiss
Daniel Brett Weiss (; born April 23, 1971) is an American television writer and producer. Along with his collaborator David Benioff, he is best-known for co-creating Game of Thrones (2011–2019), the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's series of books A Song of Ice and Fire. Early life Weiss was born and raised in Chicago, Illinois. His family is Jewish, with ancestral roots in Germany. He graduated from Wesleyan University and earned a Master of Philosophy in Irish literature from Trinity College Dublin, where he wrote his thesis on James Joyce's Finnegans Wake, "Understanding the (Net) Wake." He later earned a Master of Fine Arts in creative writing from the Iowa Writers' Workshop. Career Weiss worked as personal assistant on films such as The Viking Sagas for New Line Cinema. For a brief period, he also worked as a personal assistant for musician Glenn Frey. Weiss went to Dublin in 1995 to study Anglo-Irish literature and met David Benioff, the screenwriter of Troy. Three years later, around 1998, they met again in Santa Monica, California. Weiss and Benioff co-wrote a screenplay for a film titled The Headmaster, but it was never made. In 2003, they were hired to collaborate on a new script of Orson Scott Card's book Ender's Game, in consultation with the then-designated director Wolfgang Petersen. It was not used. Weiss's 2003 debut novel, Lucky Wander Boy, is themed around video games. In 2006, he said he had written a second novel that "needs a second draft". The same year, Weiss completed a screenplay for a film adaptation of the video game series Halo, based on a script by Alex Garland, but director Neill Blomkamp declared the project dead in late 2007. Weiss also worked on a script for a prequel to I Am Legend, but in May 2011, director Francis Lawrence said that he did not think the prequel would ever happen. Weiss collaborated with Benioff on the HBO television series Game of Thrones, based on George R. R. Martin's book series A Song of Ice and Fire. Benioff and Weiss also directed three episodes together. For the first two, they flipped a coin to decide who would get the credit on the show. Weiss received directing credit for "Two Swords", Season 4 episode 1, while Benioff was credited for "Walk of Punishment", Season 3 episode 3. Benioff and Weiss were both credited for co-directing the series finale, "The Iron Throne". On July 19, 2017, Weiss announced that he and Benioff were going to begin production on another HBO series, Confederate, after the final season of Game of Thrones. Weiss and Benioff said, "We have discussed Confederate for years, originally as a concept for a feature film, but our experience on Thrones has convinced us that no one provides a bigger, better storytelling canvas than HBO." In January 2020, HBO President Casey Bloys confirmed that the project had been officially canceled. On February 6, 2018, Disney announced that Weiss and Benioff would write and produce a