‘Game of Thrones’: HBO Says Final Season Scripts Done, Air Date Still Not Decided

TCA 2017: Network’s programming head says air date will be based on shooting requirements

Game of Thrones
HBO

There’s still more winter to look forward to, even in the midst of summer.

At the Television Critics Association’s summer press tour on Wednesday, HBO programming head Casey Bloys said that all six scripts for the final season of “Game of Thrones” are now in, but the network still hasn’t been decided whether it will air in 2018 or 2019.

Bloys says HBO is currently determining the logistics of shooting the final episodes and what the production schedule will be.

“It’s a big season,” he explained. “So they’re trying to get a sense of how long they’re going to take to film this.”

The current seventh season of “Game of Thrones” was pushed from a start date in April, when previous seasons of the show have started, to July in order to film scenes in winter. At this year’s SXSW, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss announced that they will write the final four episodes of the series, with Dave Hill writing the season premiere and Bryan Cogman — who wrote this past Sunday’s episode — penning Episode 2.

Sound designer Paula Fairfield also revealed at the fan convention Con of Thrones earlier this month that the final episodes could potentially be feature-length, though that won’t be determined until production begins.

The Season 7 finale, airing Aug. 27, will have a runtime of 82 minutes.

“I imagine they’ll be longer but … I’m not sure [how long],” Bloys said on Wednesday. “We haven’t had that discussion yet because I don’t know how long the episodes are going to be. Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it’s a great show, so who knows?”

“Game of Thrones” airs Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.

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