'Confederate' Creators Are 'Not Actively' Working On Controversial HBO Series

Photo Credit: Art Streiber

Earlier this year came the announcement that HBO is creating a television series called Confederate, which reimagines the United States where the southern states have successfully seceded from the Union, therefore allowing slavery to remain legal. Now, it has been revealed that show has stalled.

READ: ‘It’s Not Whips And Plantations’: HBO President Addresses ‘Confederate’ Backlash

The series, which is being produced by Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, "is still in development, the creators are not actively working on it," according to a report from the Washington Post. Both HBO's president and CEO responded to the backlash that followed once the show was announced, with critics not only outraged by the show's premise but how it was rolled out.

"Where we screwed up was we tried to explain a complicated subject in a press release in three paragraphs," CEO Richard Pleper previously said. "A lie goes halfway around the world before the truth puts its boots on and we bear some of the responsibility for that."

The CEO also said that the intent of the show is to bring people together and not divide them, saying: "We have a long tradition through our documentaries, through our film, of trying to bring the capacity of people to see other people in a more profound way, to the table, and we use our documentaries and our films to try to do that. Creative producers have always known that was part of our way, and that’s why they come to us to do that."

Benioff and Weiss, as well as two other producers a part of the show, also spoke out against the backlash the series received earlier this year.

"There is not going to be, you know, the big Gone With the Wind mansion," Nichelle Spellmansaid. "This is present day, or close to present day, and how the world would have evolved if the South had been successful seceding from the Union."

Source washingtonpost.com