Following the epic season six finale of Game of Thrones [read our review here], it looks like the end point is firmly in sight for HBO’s acclaimed fantasy series, with showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirming to Deadline that the plan is to wrap things up with two final shortened seasons… and possibly just 13 episodes to go!
“It’s two more seasons we’re talking about,” states Benioff. “From pretty close to the beginning, we talked about doing this in 70-75 hours, and that’s what we’ll end up with. Call it 73 for now. We’re trying to tell one cohesive story with a beginning, middle and end. We’ve known the end for quite some time and we’re hurtling towards it. Those last images from the show that aired last night showed that. Daenerys is finally coming back to Westeros; Jon Snow is king of the North and Cersei is sitting on the Iron Throne. And we know the Night King is up there, waiting for all of them. The pieces are on the board now. Some of the pieces have been removed from the board and we are heading toward the end game.”
“The thing that has excited us from the beginning, back to the way we pitched it to HBO is, it’s not supposed to be an ongoing show, where every season it’s trying to figure out new story lines,” he continues. “We wanted it to be one giant story, without padding it out to add an extra 10 hours, or because people are still watching it. We wanted to something where, if people watched it end to end, it would make sense as one continuous story. We’re definitely heading into the end game now.”
Meanwhile, HBO has also announced the directors for season 7 of the show, which includes Thrones veterans Alan Taylor, Jeremy Podeswa and Mark Mylod, along with series newcomer Matt Shakman (It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia, Fargo). So, no room this coming season for Miguel Sapochnik, who helmed season six’s ‘The Battle of the Bastards’ and ‘The Winds of Winter’, and if HBO continues giving each director two episodes apiece, it looks like season seven will consist of eight episodes in total.
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