"We love Star Wars. When George Lucas built it, he built us too," said Benioff and Weiss in statement. "Getting to talk about Star Wars with him and the current Star Wars team was the thrill of a lifetime, and we will always be indebted to the saga that changed everything. But there are only so many hours in the day, and we felt we could not do justice to both Star Wars and our Netflix projects. So we are regretfully stepping away."
Benioff and Weiss were ready to write and produce the next set of films to come after Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker (see "Final 'Rise of Skywalker' Trailer") before Netflix poached them away from Disney and Lucasfilm. Their post-Skywalker saga was supposed to kick off in December 2020, and it is unclear whether or not their departure from the project changes the projected release (see "’Game of Thrones’ Creators ‘Star Wars’ Movies Next").
Disney and Lucasfilm will need to fill the vacant producer role sooner rather than later to meet that deadline, but luckily, they have plethora of talent already working on other Star Wars projects within the franchise. In 2017, Rian Johnson was signed on to develop a new Star Wars Trilogy (see "Another Star Wars Trilogy"), and recently, it was announced that Marvel head Kevin Feige was already developing a new Star Wars film (see "Kevin Feige Working On 'Star Wars' Film").
