David Benioff

David Benioff was born David Friedman in New York City in 1970. He is an American novelist, screenwriter and producer best known for co-creating, with D. B. Weiss, the HBO series Game of Thrones, an adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. Long before that success, he had already built a career in fiction and big-budget film.

His family was Jewish, with roots across central and eastern Europe. After studying at Dartmouth, he worked as a club bouncer in San Francisco and taught high school English in Brooklyn. He then went to Dublin, where he studied Irish literature at Trinity College and met Weiss. He later earned a master's degree in creative writing at the University of California, Irvine, in 1999. His first novel, which became 25th Hour, was published in 2001 and filmed by Spike Lee.

His work moves easily between prose and screenplays. He wrote the script for the mythological epic Troy (2004) and worked on X-Men Origins: Wolverine (2009), where he wanted a story more centred on character. His novel City of Thieves appeared in 2008, and he adapted The Kite Runner for the screen. His recurring themes include violence, survival and moral choice under extreme pressure.

His legacy rests largely on Game of Thrones, one of the most watched series of its era, and on the controversy that surrounded its final season. He and Weiss later moved on to new projects for Netflix and Disney.