Game Of Thrones Season 8 Really Might Not Start Until 2019

There is only one season of Game of Thrones left, but fans might have to wait longer than expected to see it. It has been reported that filming on Season 8 will continue all the way to next summer, making it unlikely that the season will air before 2019.

According to Entertainment Weekly, Season 8 doesn't start shooting until this month, considerably later than previous seasons. Even if the show was to follow the six-month production schedule of earlier seasons, it still wouldn't finish until the spring. But as it stands, the scale of the production on these final episodes suggest that it may go beyond that into the summer. Even though this is the shortest season to date, it has been reported that each episode will be much longer than usual.

EW quotes actor Liam Cunningham (Davos Seaworth) who states, "[The episodes are] definitely going to be bigger and what I hear is longer. We're filming right up until the summer. When you think about it, up until last season we'd have six months to do ten episodes, so we're [doing] way more than that for six episodes. So that obviously will translate into longer episodes."

Another reason for the extended production was also provided by Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont). Glen suggested that the simultaneous shoots of previous seasons wouldn't be possible, as most of the key characters are required to be in the same place at the same time.

"I think this last season will take much longer to shoot because they can only use one unit because we're all in the same sort of scenes," he told the Independent. "We're all starting to occupy the same territory, we're all starting to be in the same storylines and so they can't [have two filming units] anymore."

Season 7 of Game of Thrones drew record-breaking audience figures, despite the fact that it was hit by a number of hacks and leaks. Initially scripts were taken directly from HBO, and this was followed by the theft of actual episodes from a distribution partner in India. Nevertheless, the season finale was seen by a total of 16.5 million viewers, making it the most watched episode in the show's history.