In 2019, Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss signed a massive contract with Netflix to create, produce, and oversee a variety of projects, and now the first of those has been revealed.
Netflix has officially announced a new 30-minute "dramedy" called The Chair, which features Sandra Oh (Killing Eve, Grey's Anatomy) and Jay Duplass (Transparent, Outside In). The show is focused around the chair of an English department at a big school; there will be six episodes in Season 1.
Amanda Peet (The Commons of Pensacola, Syriana, 2012) is the writer, showrunner, and executive producer of The Chair. Benioff and Weiss are also executive producers. Peet is married to Benioff.
The Harvard-educated scholar and screenwriter Annie Julia Wyman co-wrote the script for the pilot of The Chair. There is no word yet on when Season 1 will premiere or who else may star in it.
Netflix paid Benioff and Weiss a reported $200 million to leave HBO for the streaming network, and The Chair is the first project coming out of that deal. Sources told The Hollywood Reporter that The Chair was initially pitched to HBO when Benioff and Weiss were at the company.
Following the massive success of Game of Thrones--the show's final season broke franchise viewership records--Weiss and Benioff were thought to be heading to Star Wars next. However, the pair backed out of their planned Star Wars trilogy after signing with Netflix.