The Game of Thrones show runners have revealed a little bit of information about the season 7 shooting schedule and how much time is left….
By Damon Martin — Editor/Lead Writer
Winter has finally arrived on Game of Thrones, but the seasons changing also means the show is heading towards the end game.
While the total number of episodes hasn’t been confirmed, Game of Thrones show runners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have officially stated that there are two seasons left with shortened runs in each season.
“Two more (seasons),” Benioff said on the “UFC Unfiltered” podcast. “The two seasons will be a bit shorter, we don’t have a definite episode count, but each season will be a little bit shorter. Just because each year takes longer and longer to shoot.”
Current rumors have Game of Thrones ending in 13 more episodes with season 7 taking place over seven episodes and season 8 finishing the series with six final episodes.
One thing the Game of Thrones show runners know for sure is that season 7 won’t start quite as early as past seasons of the show.
Typically, Game of Thrones has debuted in April each year although season 6 did get off to a slightly later start than usual.
If season 7 is shortened to seven total episodes, a later start date makes sense, but the Game of Thrones show runners say it actually has more to do with shooting schedules because now that winter has arrived in Westeros, they need a lot more snow.
“We don’t have an air date yet, but this year will probably be a little bit later,” Benioff said. “We’re starting a bit later because at the end of this season winter is here and that means sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes anymore.
“So we kind of pushed everything down the line so we could get some grim, grim weather, even in the sunnier places we shoot.”
Game of Thrones typically shoots over two or three locations during the season with Belfast, Ireland and Croatia serving as two popular landing spots for the series.
There’s no word on when production will begin for Game of Thrones season 7 but we now know for certain that it will be the penultimate season and it won’t be on HBO until a little bit later into 2017.
