David Benioff

David Benioff (born David Friedman; September 25, 1970) is an American novelist, screenwriter, and television producer. He is best known for co-creating, co-writing, and executive producing the HBO series Game of Thrones (2011–2019) with D. B. Weiss, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire novels that became one of the most commercially successful and critically acclaimed television series, earning 59 Primetime Emmy Awards including four for Outstanding Drama Series. Benioff's earlier career included publishing the novels The 25th Hour (2001), which he adapted into a film directed by Spike Lee, and City of Thieves (2008), as well as writing screenplays for major films such as Troy (2004), The Kite Runner (2007), and X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009). After concluding Game of Thrones—whose eighth season drew significant fan and critic backlash for its condensed narrative and character resolutions—Benioff and Weiss entered a $200 million overall deal with Netflix in 2019, leading to their adaptation of Liu Cixin's Remembrance of Earth's Past trilogy as the series 3 Body Problem (2024). They were initially slated to develop a new Star Wars trilogy for Lucasfilm, announced in 2018, but departed in 2019 citing a desire to pursue independent projects amid reported creative differences with Disney.

Benioff was the youngest of three children born to Barbara (née Benioff) Friedman and Stephen Friedman, with two older sisters. His father, Stephen Friedman, served as co-chairman of Goldman Sachs from 1990 to 1994 and later as chairman of the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board. The family was Jewish, with Benioff's parents both of Jewish descent and his great-grandparents comprising Jewish immigrants from Romania, Austria, Russia, Poland or Germany, and Ukraine.

Benioff shares Jewish ancestry with longtime collaborator D.B. Weiss, whom he met in 1995 while pursuing graduate studies at Trinity College Dublin; this background has informed subtle cultural elements in their adaptations, though neither has publicly emphasized it in political contexts.