HBO Announces Season 7 of Game Of Thrones Will Only Be 7 Episodes

i09 – Seven kingdoms! Seven gods! And now, season seven of Game of Thrones will only have seven episodes! Coincidence?! Almost certainly! Both the showrunners and the directors haven’t exactly kept Game of Thrones’ shortened final seasons a secret, but now HBO has specified there will be only seven new episodes of the show airing next year, and that the season will indeed premiere later than usual. From Variety:

“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. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”

Specifically, they have to wait to shoot until actual winter comes, because, well, winter has finally come to Westeros. But that’s only for southern locations like King’s Landing; the show will also be filming part of the upcoming season in Iceland, presumably for places the winter will hit hardest (e.g. Winterfell)

Listen I dont have a problem with a TV show finishing off a series with shortened episodes. That happens all the time. Usually a successful TV show experiences the power struggle between networks and writers. The networks want to milk a successful cash cow for as long as they possibly can, the writers have a story in mind and want to wrap it up with the correct number of episodes as they see fit. So a lot of times its like the networks want 2 seasons, the writers want 1, and so you compromise and you get 2 seasons with shorter number of eps. Makes sense.

What doesnt make sense is this NONSENSE about the goddam weather. We gotta start shooting later because winter arrived in the fucking show? What? No. Do we wait for it to be Dragon Season when we’re filming scenes with fucking dragons? Do we wait for the Dragons to fly south for the winter? No. We CGI that shit because dragons arent fucking real. You wanna make it look like winter? Put everyone in big heavy coats and put some fake snow on the ground. Go to fucking Alaska or something. Do what every other movie and TV show has done. Problem solved. And if you start shooting later you just shoot longer. Its like in school when you got snow days and they tacked them on at the end. Still gotta give me my full episodes.

So get outta here HBO. We’re talking about a show with mythical beasts and magic and entire castles being blown up…we dont need to make sure the seasons in real life match up with the seasons in the books and TV.

PS – Sounds like theres only gonna be 7 eps in the final season as well. Pretty crazy that a show that for so long was seemingly biding time because the writer hadnt finished his books is now basically in fast forward. Only 14 more episodes of Game of Thrones ever. That crept up fast.