Game of Thrones to return later than usual next year for a shorter season
Summer is coming
Winter may finally have come in Game of Thrones, but fans of the HBO series will now be desperately waiting for summer to arrive as the critically-acclaimed fantasy is confirmed to be delayed for a later airing next year.
Instead of the series’ usual April debut, Thrones will instead turn up a few months later – it’ll probably be airing this time next year or shortly afterwards, in fact – and will only consist of a shorter 7-episode season, as had previously been suggested by showrunners David Benioff and DB Weiss.
“Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, 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 Casey Bloys, president, HBO programming (via EW).
“Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”
This means that the series will start shooting later this summer, in a series of locations also confirmed by HBO – Northern Ireland, Spain and Iceland, the latter notable because it was previously used for scenes shot North of the Wall in season 2 and hasn’t been seen much since.
Will another character cross through the Wall, or will the rest of Westeros just become as cold as the wildling habitats ever were? Only (a very long) time will tell.
Game of Thrones will return next summer
Authors
Huw Fullerton is a Commissioning Editor for Radio Times magazine, covering Entertainment, Comedy and Specialist Drama.
