HBO Confirms That Game Of Thrones Won't Return Until Next Summer, And Will Be Only Seven Episodes Long

[Primetimer]

More time for you to read the books. HAHAHAHA figured we could all use a laugh.

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[sugarbaker design]

Since season one, a season has consisted of ten episodes, not eight. Great research.

[Tara Ariano]

Excuse me, I had just written about the eight-episode season of Pump and must have had that in my mind. I will fix it. Thanks for the gracious correction.

[benteen]

My prediction is that GRRM still won't finish The Winds of Winter by then.

[proserpina65]

You could read the books which exist, anyway. But Benteen is likely correct - GRRM probably won't be done with book 6.

[hks]

Anyone know if this shortened 7-episode season is the first half of the final season? Like how they split the final season of Mad Men into two? I'm just really hoping for more than this...

[Dobian]

Maybe they are doing a Sopranos/Breaking Bad/Mad Men kind of thing with a two-part final season.  Otherwise this has become GoT: The Miniseries.

[SimoneS]

I will miss GoT in the Spring. It always softened my withdrawal caused by TWD finale. Seven episodes aren't bad. 

[Chris24601]

20 hours ago, hks said:

Anyone know if this shortened 7-episode season is the first half of the final season? Like how they split the final season of Mad Men into two? I'm just really hoping for more than this...

From what I've read the plan is two more seasons of 7 and 6 episodes respectively. The reason for the shortened episode count is that the set pieces as we enter the climax of the series are so big they literally need the same amount of time and budget that went into filming ten episodes just to film seven episodes (ex. Battle of the Bastards took over a month of filming all by itself, not even counting post production work, and they want to go bigger next season).

As it is they were still working on the last episodes of season six (polishing the effects and such) when the season began airing... that's how tight their production times are. They are literally producing the equivalent of three to four feature films in a single year's time when a typical film of this nature has a development and production cycle of two years or more for a single film.

My hunch too is that we'll probably end up with more over-length episodes next season as well (i.e. 55+ minutes in length) so that the final production length will probably be more like almost eight regular length episodes.

[Macbeth]

And so our watch  begins.