With the penultimate season of Game of Thrones fast approaching, details about the HBO drama’s final season are starting to fall into place.
Ahead of the season seven premiere in July, sources confirm that the eighth and final season will run six episodes.
The upcoming seventh season of HBO’s epic fantasy drama will run one episode more, totaling seven episodes.
News first broke in April 2016 that showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss were mulling two shorter final seasons of the George R.R. Martin adaptation.
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Several months later, HBO programming president Casey Bloys confirmed at the Television Critics Association summer press tour that the eighth season would be its last.
“I think [the showrunners, D.B. Weiss and David Benioff] have a very specific plan about the number of seasons they want to do,” Bloys told reporters at the time. “If I could get them to do more, I would take 10 seasons, but we want to take their lead with what they could do and what the best version of the show is.”
However, at the time Bloys would not confirm a final season episode count.
But don’t cry for Westeros, or HBO, just yet. The pay cabler is already working on five potential series to serve as a successor to the wildly popular drama. Author Martin is involved in all potential offshoots, the premises for which are not yet known.
“I do think it’s very unlikely that we’ll be getting four (or five) series,” Martin wrote in a LiveJournal post earlier this month. “At least not immediately. What we do have here is an order for four — now five — pilot scripts. How many pilots will be filmed, and how many series might come out of that, remains to be seen. (If we do get five series on the air, I might have to change my name to Dick Direwolf).”
Benioff and Weiss will also exec produce whatever project(s) move forward. Max Borenstein, Jane Goldman, Brian Helgeland and Carly Wray are the writers behind the various projects.
EW was the first to report on the final season episode count.
