D. B. Weiss
D. B. Weiss is a writer, born 1971.
Four credits in this catalogue, and two of them are documentaries about the third. Daniel Brett Weiss, born in Chicago in 1971, is one half of a writing partnership whose visible output is two television series and one small film, which is either an alarming ratio or the only one that matters, depending on how you feel about the series.
The series is Game of Thrones, co-created with David Benioff from George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire and run on HBO from 2011 to 2019. Weiss's shelf from it holds Emmys for drama writing and Hugo Awards in both the long and short form dramatic presentation categories, which is a rare double: the television industry and the fantasy readership agreeing, for a while, about the same show. Away from the partnership he wrote and produced Metal Lords, a 2022 teen comedy drama that is not held here. In 2024 he and Benioff returned with 3 Body Problem.
What makes the career unusual is the absence of a hedge. There is no quiet run of other credits to point at, no second lane, nothing to change the subject to. One enormous swing, a shelf of awards from its middle years, and an argument about its ending that has outlasted most of the shows it was competing with.
Movies (2)
TV (3)
Where to start with D. B. Weiss
There is only one real door here, so go through it: Game of Thrones, from the beginning, at the pace it was written for rather than in one weekend. The first seasons are the case for the partnership, dense with plot moved cleanly, and the later ones are the case against, which is worth seeing for yourself rather than inheriting.
3 Body Problem is the follow-up and the fairer test, because nobody arrives at it with ten years of expectations. It is austere and slow to warm and much better once it stops explaining. Game of Thrones: The Last Watch earns its place afterwards, a documentary about the crew rather than the cast, and Game of Thrones: A Day in the Life is the shorter, sunnier version.