Showrunners of the Game of Thrones series, David Benioff and Daniel Brett Weiss, will develop a thriller dedicated to the life of the famous American science fiction writer Howard Lovecraft.

According to foreign media reports, Benioff and Weiss are involved in the Warner Bros. movie studio project. as producers, and it is not yet known whether they will take over the directing of the film. The script for the film will be written by Phil Hay and Matt Manfredi.

The film will be based on the graphic novel by Keith Giffen, Hans Rodioff and Enrique Breccia Lovecraft, released in the comic category Vertigo (a publisher owned by DC). The comic is also dedicated to fragments from the life of Howard Lovecraft, however, the details of the plot of the upcoming adaptation are unclear. At the same time, Variety notes that Benioff and Weiss want to focus on the idea that the creatures invented by Lovecraft are real.

According to Deadline, the Game of Thrones screenwriters had long planned to do the film adaptation of the Giffen comic and for a long time discussed the details with Warner Bros. representatives. Courtney Valenti and Toby Emmerich.

After the Game of Thrones ended, the creative duo was supposed to start developing the next Star Wars trilogy, which was no longer related to the Skywalker family. However, in August 2019, Benioff and Weiss signed a multi-million dollar contract with the Netflix streaming service, and at the end of October they announced that they had to stop working on Star Wars.

“Unfortunately, there is only 24 hours in a day, and we felt that we would not be able to pay due attention to Star Wars and our projects for Netflix at the same time. Therefore, we made a difficult decision to leave the project, ”they said.

Mythcraft Lovecraft


Howard Lovecraft became a famous writer only after his death. His works found their readers only in 1970-1980 - in the wake of the popularity of horror and fantasy literature - while the author died in 1937. Lovecraft's work had a strong influence on the formation of Stephen King, Jorge Borges and Joyce Oates and modern mass culture in general.

Lovecraft's works, in turn, were written under the inspiration of the work of a pioneer of the genre combining mysticism and detective stories - Edgar Alan Poe. The work of Nathaniel Hawthorne and Ambrose Beers also had a noticeable influence on the writer's worldview.

In the aggregate, Lovecraft's works are a synthesis of biblical and ancient mythology with elements invented by the writer (myth-making). The central motive of his works is the all-consuming fear that a person experiences before the unknown. Lovecraft created a whole universe of horror and despair, an important part of which is the myths of Cthulhu.

Cthulhu is one of the most famous deities of the Lovecraft pantheon. This ancient creature lives on the bottom of the Pacific Ocean and generates nightmares that only sensitive people can see. The Lovecraft Pandemonium also includes Azathoth, Dagon, Shub-Niggurath and other creatures.

Lovecraft's works have become the basis for movie scripts many times. Among the big fans of the work of the Gothic writer is director Stuart Gordon. He was engaged in the production of Lovecraft films "Resuscitator", "Dagon" and "Outside."

Among the other films shot based on Lovecraft's works are “The Bewitched Castle” (Francis Ford Coppola also contributed to the script), “Dunwich Horror” and “City of the Living Dead”.

  • © Shot from the series "True Detective" (2014)

The screenwriter of “Alien” Dan O'Bannon was also a great admirer of Lovecraft's stories and, when creating the image of an alien creature, he adhered to the knowledge gleaned from the writer's work. This was not very liked by the rest of the creators of the picture, and a number of characteristic features were excluded from the final version of the Alien.

Many connoisseurs of Lovecraft's works will certainly see the reference to them in the first season of the series “True Detective” - recall at least the “Yellow King” (or Hastur, by the way, before Lovecraft mentioned by Ambrose Bierce).

References to the work of Lovecraft are in the books of the saga "Song of Ice and Fire" by George Martin. Hardly Martin just named one of the Greyjoys Dagon. On the network, one can also find speculations that the cult of the Drowned God, professed by the inhabitants of the Iron Islands, is similar to the cult of Dagon or even Cthulhu.