Those who are bang up to date with Game of Thrones will have to wait longer than usual to watch the new season.
It had been hinted by various showrunners that season seven of Game of Thrones would arrive later than usual and now its creator, HBO, has confirmed the news.
The television network said to expect the return of Game of Thrones in the summer of 2017, meaning a slightly longer wait than the usual April air-date – and the smarter viewers among us may know why.
“Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storylines of next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing,” HBO president of programming Casey Bloys said.
“Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule,” he added.
HBO said Game of Thrones season 7 will be seven episodes long, three fewer than previous seasons, and that it will definitely end with the eighth season.
“I’m sure on some level [HBO would] love to see the show carry on beyond the seasons that we’ve got planned, but they trust the people that they work with,” Benioff and Weiss said in a recent podcast. “So we tell them that the story ends here and there is no real story beyond that endpoint, they stick with it.”
The writers admitted they planned to cap the series at 73 hours several years hence the drop to seven episodes in 2017 and six in the eighth-and-final season. It is thought cutting down will help boost production values and overall quality, not that Game of Thrones is exactly short on either.
Known locations for filming the new Game of Thrones season include Northern Ireland, Iceland and Spain. Iceland was used extensively for the North of the Wall scenes during the time Jon Snow was [sort of spoiler alert] a part of the Wildlings camp.
Game of Thrones was nominated for 23 primetime Emmys and each episode averages 23 million viewers, an HBO ratings record.
Sadly for those who are still behind on seasons, NowTV recently removed the back catalogue so you will need to find other ways to watch it. Preferably of the legal variety.
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