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After months of unconfirmed reports and speculation, HBO has finally come out with the cold, hard facts regarding Game Of Thrones season seven.
In disappointing news for fans, the next season will air months later than normal, with the typical April premiere date being pushed back to the Northern Hemisphere’s summer – sometime between June and August 2017.
As previously reported, shooting of the hit HBO fantasy series needed to be postponed in order for weather conditions to reflect the show’s storyline – because, as we know all too well, winter is coming.
“Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing,” said HBO’s president of production, Casey Bloys, in a statement. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”
Production is expected to commence late in the Northern Hemisphere’s summer in Northern Ireland, with other locations including Spain and Iceland.
The other sad news for Game Of Thrones fans is that the episode count is, as rumoured, set to get significantly smaller. While past seasons have all featured 10 episodes, the next will have just seven.
The eighth and final season is expected to have around the same number. As Benioff and Weiss explained in a recent interview, they’ve known for some time how many episodes they’d need to tell the story of Game Of Thrones.
The later start date for Game Of Thrones season seven will see it forfeit any Emmy nominations, since to be eligible a show must run from June 1 to May 31. It’s no doubt a disappointing fact for the actors and team behind GOT, since it scored the most nods of any show when the 2016 nominations were announced last week, picking up 23 in total.
