Short answers, pulled from the story.
David Benioff is an American novelist, screenwriter, and producer born on the 25th of September, 1970, in New York City. He is best known for co-creating Game of Thrones (2011-2019) alongside D. B. Weiss, the HBO adaptation of George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire. He also wrote the screenplays for 25th Hour (2002), Troy (2004), and The Kite Runner (2007).
David Benioff adopted the pen name to avoid confusion with other writers already using the name David Friedman when his first novel was published in 2001. Benioff is his mother Barbara's maiden name. His legal copyright filings from the 2010s onward list him as David Benioff Friedman.
Benioff met D. B. Weiss at Trinity College, Dublin, where Benioff enrolled in 1995 to study Irish literature for a one-year program. Weiss later became his long-term creative collaborator on Game of Thrones.
Warner Bros. paid David Benioff $2.5 million to write the screenplay for Troy (2004).
A petition on Change.org calling Benioff and Weiss woefully incompetent writers and demanding a remake of the eighth season gathered over 1.5 million signatures. Richard Roeper wrote in the Chicago Sun Times that he doubted he had ever seen such a level of fan and critical anger directed at any show.
In early August 2019, Benioff and D. B. Weiss signed an exclusive multi-year film and television deal with Netflix worth $200 million. Their first Netflix project was directing the stand-up comedy special Leslie Jones: Time Machine, followed by the series 3 Body Problem, which Benioff co-wrote and executive produced alongside Weiss and Alexander Woo.