Confederate was a planned American alternate history drama television series developed for the network HBO by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, who had previously developed the HBO series Game of Thrones. The series was to be set in a timeline where the American Civil War ended in a stalemate. It looks like it has been canceled and unlikely that it will be done.

34 comments

  2. It’s an interesting idea and it could be great a la Man in the High Castle, but not with D&D at the helm to fuck it up like they did with GoT.

  4. D & D directing?

    Lol. Absolutely not. Considering that they’re taking a very sensitive time in U.S. history and are fictionalizing it for profit…It’s going to be cringey beyond belief.

  6. So it’s like the Man in the High Castle but for civil war?

    You could make one of these programmes about basically any country In the world.

    Esssntiallt it’s What If? For history lovers .

  8. That seems derivative of *Man in the High Castle*, but less interesting and more unpleasant to watch. I’m not sure what they’d be hoping to say with it and I suspect all the controversy it would stoke would be negative.

    Like…either the South ended slavery and we have some weird alternate Jim Crow history worse than what actually happened (not sure why anyone would want to see that) or slavery is still going on and the Confederacy is a boring uncomplicated villain to be defeated by the Good Guys.

    Do you portray the South positively? Gross Confederate apologia. Do you portray it negatively? Wow, so brave of you to call the bad guys bad. No upside either way.

    And those two definitely don’t have the chops to tackle subject matter like that on their own.

  9. Personally not interested in the concept. I’d be much more into an actual historically accurate depiction that’s what we never get.

  10. No.

    Alternative history can be a lot of fun and can produce some super interesting plotlines. It’s one of my favorite genres. Like, one of my favorite books is based on if Anne Boleyn had a son and was not killed.

    But I can see a million ways that a show about a successful confederacy could be extremal insensitive to the subjects it would need to discuses and just overall not be *good.* I’m also not sure HBO would be the right company to be producing something like that as while their shows can be good, I fear it would fall into the trap of romanticizing or downplaying aspects of the situation for drama. PBS I feel could make a historically semi-accurate but still interesting show

  11. I wanted to watch Man In the High Castle as the premise seemed interesting but couldn’t get past how graphic the violence was. So while this idea is also interesting, I’d rather not see it on HBO as it will be similarly graphic.

  13. Out of curiosity, how could the civil war ever end in a stalemate? The North’s win condition was reunification. The South’s win condition was separation. If the North wasn’t in charge of the South by the end, then the South won. There’s no stalemate condition.

  14. Not really.

    For the same reason I didn’t really want to watch The Man in The High Castle. It’s a little too real and a little too close to home for me to consider it entertainment even if it were well done.

  15. Absolutely not. I’d rather not see black people treated even more terribly in an alternate reality. A concept like this might be palatable as a book but it’s not something I would want to see.

  17. I am desperate to see how spectacularly and insanely Benioff and Weiss could fuck up this premise and I’m pissed that HBO is not going to give them the opportunity.

  18. Amazon did Man in the High Castle and that started pretty good. So sure, I’d give it a go.

  19. No thank you. I’m imagining the graphic racism and I have no interest in watching anything like that. Movies about slavery, lynching, Jim crow, etc are very traumatizing to watch as a black person and I guarantee that if it was developed by the people who did GOT, they would find a way to include the most shocking and graphic scenes to ever appear on screen.

  20. HBO was bought out by Discovery. They cancel everything. Soon it’ll be Amish Mafia and endless Sharkweek.

    Also, I’m already watching an alternate timeline series, the Handmaid’s Tale, so no.

  21. You know, I did want to see it. Purely curious to see how they handled it. I thought it might have been interesting to see a modern Underground Railroad implementing cellphones and drones, you know. I thought it might have been an opportunity to expose and explore some of those injustices and prejudices that still exist 200 years later. Maybe show how even if the Confederacy had been successful, things would not have been great for anyone on either side of that border.

    I didn’t want to see a white supremacist wet dream and I think HBO would have been very careful to keep that from happening. I didn’t really fear that. I just thought it would be a controversial and likely very compelling look at an alternate history.

  22. Yeah, I’d give it a shot. The alternate history media market is largely untapped.

  25. Absolutely not. There is a huge percentage of the American population that already acts like the savage ass kicking and humiliating defeat the Union handed the filthy Reb whores was a stalemate. Those traitor worshipers don’t need any more help fueling their fantasies.

  26. I mean there’s already The Confederate States of America which is a satire/mockumentary.

  27. I would like to see it done as an adaptation of the book series *How Few Remain*. It was really well written and covered a lot of the complicated and touchy subjects that would necessarily come up in such a timeline. It went all the way until the end of WWII.

  28. If the whole thing is done in sock puppets and card board bosses for sets with pre-school crafts for props.

  29. I would. I love shows set in historical time periods, including alternate history shows like Man in the High Castle. Perhaps the most interesting alternate history storyline is what happens during WW I if the US never got back together. Answer: the US probably doesn’t get involved, Germany probably wins, and WW II probably never happens. Or at least, not in any way how it actually did.

    Although I wouldn’t love all the outrage and fake outrage over a show like this, or watching the show writers twist themselves into contortions in trying to write good stories that also don’t trigger all the outrage and fake outrage each week. I think it’d be a very tough needle to thread between being outrageous and pandering.

  31. There’s a British mockumentary called CSA that’s about this and it’s pretty good and thought provoking.

    I think a take on a modern Confederacy has potential to be really interesting but it’d be difficult to pull off.

  32. The problem isn’t that a compelling story to be made from that premise. It’s that any such story that’s well-made would be polarizing and invite a lot of outrage from one side or the other. It would be extremely difficult to thread that needle in a way that really works.

    This is a really visceral subject that many Americans feel strongly about, so it wouldn’t be just the kind of commentary invited by GOT or Watchmen. It would be an entirely different level.

  33. If it was set during our immediately after the civil war, no. It would probably be filled with over- the-top demonization of the south, which they would have to do so they don’t accidentally glorify an enemy nation and rekindle support.

    I would, however, like to see something set in ww1 or 2 or something. Would the confederacy have had enough resources to intervene in Europe? Considering the British Empire would have been interested in gaining influence in the south as part of a strategy to keep the rising United States in check, would the US prefer a German Europe over a British Atlantic? Would the two American brothers have risen up together against the Soviets?

  34. I love alternate history type shows…For All Mankind, Man in the High Castle…so I would love to see this.

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