HBO programming president Casey Bloys opened up — ever so slightly — about the upcoming eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones,” including when we might finally see a trailer, or really any footage longer than 3 seconds.
“All in the works. I can’t reveal the dates,” Bloys told TheWrap on Friday during the Television Critics Association (TCA) press tour. “I’ve seen a cut. I don’t know if I’ve seen a finished one.”
Last Sunday’s Super Bowl seemed like a good spot for HBO to debut a full-length look at the final season — it ran a trailer for “Westworld” season 2 during last year’s Big Game — but the network instead did a branded content advertisement with Bud Light.
Last July, Bloys told reporters during the Summer TCA press tour that of the five “Thrones” spinoff scripts in development, Jane Goldman’s is the only one they are putting into production. When pressed for an update on if the network has any plans for more than just the one — which may or may not be called “The Long Night” — he said that it’s still up in the air.
“Some we have moved on from. Some are still in development.” Oh, and on that title: “Nothing has been decided about the prequel, other than we hope to start shooting early summer.”
Bloys pushed back against a report last month regarding the episode lengths for the final season.“Somewhere, some editing facility somebody saw something. That’s where it’s coming from,” Bloys said. It’s been widely speculated that the final six episodes will all be feature length, meaning over an hour, which Bloys said there was some truth to, but that the editing process is not done.
“They are not all feature-length episodes. Some are to time, some are longer. They’re still editing,” Bloys said.
Speaking of that Bud Light-“Game of Thrones” Super Bowl ad — which was directed by David Nutter, the man who shot the “Red Wedding” and directed half of the series’ upcoming final six episodes — Bloys said he has no regrets about the ad and that everyone at the show and HBO loved it.
Titled “Joust,” the 60-second spot starring The Mountain (Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson) and The Bud Knight, which aired during the second quarter of the game, delivered “a quintessential ‘Game of Thrones’-twist ending to the latest entry in Bud Light’s series of ‘Dilly Dilly’ commercials,” according to HBO press materials.
“I think there’s always a risk when you mix brands, BUT [everyone at HBO and ‘Game of Thrones’] really liked it,” Bloys said. “The reason why is it was fun. There was a sense of fun to it, I don’t think anybody is taking themselves too seriously, and I think that came through in the spot. And I think it was a really funny spot.”
The eighth and final season of “Game of Thrones” premieres April 14 on HBO.