Everything we know so far about the HBO fantasy epic\u2019s six-episode final season, which is slated to debut in the first half of 2019.<\/b>
\nGame of Thrones wrapped up its seventh and penultimate season in August 2017, leaving fans with plenty to speculate on the fates of their favorite characters in season eight. Naturally, it also left many people with questions about when the show will return for its swan song, and what we already know to expect.
Alas, many of the details surrounding Game of Thrones \u2019 eighth and final season are just as much a cliffhanger as the Night King knocking down the wall and Jon Snow having sex with his Aunt Dany. But we do have at least some info to go on. Here\u2019s what we know (and what we don\u2019t) about season eight so far.
According to a statement that HBO released in January, Game of Thrones will return for its final season in 2019. The season\u2019s debut window has since narrowed a bit: While speaking to reporters at the Television Critics Association summer press tour in July, HBO programming president Casey Bloys announced that the season eight will premiere in the first half of 2019.
According to the Hollywood Reporter\u2019s account of Bloys\u2019s comments at TCA, \u201che was tight-lipped about what to expect\u201d from the final season, aside from teasing, \u201cIt\u2019s pretty great.\u201d
The long wait between seasons has to do with the extensive amount of production time the show requires. As Bloys warned the Hollywood Reporter in 2017, before the 2019 debut was confirmed:
HBO previously announced that Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D. B. Weiss, as well as David Nutter and Miguel Sapochnik, will be the directors for season eight, and that the season will be written by Benioff, Weiss, Bryan Cogman, and Dave Hill.
At the conclusion of Game of Thrones \u2019 sixth season in 2016, showrunners Benioff and Weiss said that they were planning to end the show after another 13 episodes that would be split between two final seasons.
Season seven ran for seven episodes \u2014 so simple arithmetic suggested that season eight will be six episodes long. In January 2018, HBO confirmed that it will indeed contain six episodes.
It\u2019s easy to wonder how the show could possibly wrap up all of its existing storylines in just six episodes, without speeding up its storytelling and ignoring the concept of time more than it already has.
But the good news is that even though the season itself will be short, Vanity Fair reported in July 2017 that each episode may be expanded to feature length \u2014 80 minutes or longer \u2014 meaning that \u201ca conservative estimate would put the entirety of Season 8 at about eight or nine hours long.\u201d
And with some of Game of Thrones \u2019 season seven episodes running longer than an hour \u2014 including the finale, which clocked in at around 80 minutes \u2014 it would stand to reason that Game of Thrones \u2019 remaining six episodes likely will too.
In 2017, Bloys spoke at Moravian college and told an audience there that in an effort to safeguard against spoilers and leaks, the show was going to film different endings.
\u201cI know in Game of Thrones, the ending, they\u2019re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really knows what happens,\u201d Bloys said, according to the Morning Call\u2019s report . \u201cYou have to do that on a long show. Because when you\u2019re shooting something, people know. So they\u2019re going to shoot multiple versions so that there\u2019s no real definitive answer until the end.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

Similarity rank: 9<\/div>\n

Sentiment rank: 0.5<\/div>\n

<\/div>\n

TW posts: 8<\/div>\n

TW reposts: 0<\/div>\n

TW likes: 1<\/div>\n

TW sentiment: 0<\/div>\n<\/div>\n