'Game of Thrones' creators announce new series 'Confederate' for HBO

'Game of Thrones' creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss at the 67th Primetime Emmy Awards (Reuters)

With HBO’s most popular hit “Game of Thrones” in the midst of its penultimate season, both the network and the creators are looking ahead to the future beyond the show. On Wednesday, it was announced that creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss will develop a brand new show for the paid cable giant.

The new original series, which will be written and helmed by the creative duo, is called “Confederate.” The show will depict an alternate timeline in the United States in which the southern states successfully seceded from the Union. The story will follow a wide variety of characters on both sides of “Mason-Dixon Demilitarized Zone” in a world where slavery was never abolished, but grew in the modern age. HBO promises fans will get to follow freedom fighters, slave hunters, politicians, abolitionists, journalists and executives of slave-holding conglomerates through the events that lead to the show's Third American Civil War.

Weiss and Benioff will write the series and serve as showrunners. Alongside them will be Nichelle Tramble Spellman (“Justified,” “The Good Wife”) and Malcolm Spellman (“Empire”) as executive producers.

“We have discussed ‘Confederate’ for years, originally as a concept for a feature film,” Benioff and Weiss said in a statement. “But our experience on ‘Thrones’ has convinced us that no one provides a bigger, better storytelling canvas than HBO. There won’t be dragons on White Walkers in the series, but we are creating a world, and we couldn’t imagine better partners in world-building than Nichelle and Malcolm, who have impressed us for a long time with their wit, their imagination and their Scrabble-playing skills.”

Production on “Confederate” won’t begin until after “Game of Thrones” finishes its final season.