Game of Thrones' seventh season might not be over yet, but it's not too early to look ahead to the next. Here's what to expect with GoT Season 8.
This is the final season.
In June 2016, HBO programming president Casey Bloys announced Season 8 would be Game of Thrones's last. '[The showrunners] have a very specific plan about the number of seasons they want to do,' he said during a press tour. 'If I could get them to do more I would take 10 more seasons. But we take their lead on what they [need] to make the best version of their show.'
There will only be six episodes.
At the end of Season 6, showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told Variety that they only had 13 episodes left, which meant seven for Season 7 and six for Season 8.
The episodes will be feature-length.
Though the episode count has decreased, the runtime will not. While episodes have traditionally been an hour long, the ones in Season 8 are clocking in at 80 minutes or more, according to GoT's sound designer, Paula Fairfield. And apparently the team hasn't discussed a cap on episode length (yet). 'Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it's a great show, so who knows?' HBO's Casey Bloys said.
It will premiere in April 2019.
After much speculation on whether the show would return in 2018 or the year after, Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) confirmed the latter in an interview with Variety. 'Game of Thrones comes out in 2019,' she said.
On January 4, HBO officially announced the eighth and final season will premiere next year.
And at the end of January, Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) announced what month the show will return. 'We wrap in December and we air our first episode in April [2019],' she told Metro.
HBO's Casey Bloys also confirmed that Season 8 would premiere 'sometime in 2019…first half,' during TCA in July 2018, Deadline reports.
The script is already written.
GoT's final episodes have already been penned, Bloys confirmed during the TCA press tour in July 2017. But in the show's classic tight-lipped fashion, we have no idea what happens, and probably won't until it airs.
The writers for the new season are David Benioff & D.B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman and Dave Hill, HBO announced.
Filming started in October 2017.
Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) appeared to hint that Season 8 starts filming this fall in a new interview. 'I don’t know what’s going to happen next season, he told Collider. 'We go back in October, so maybe in the next few weeks, we’ll get the scripts and I’ll find out.'
In a recent interview, Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos) revealed that filming is slated to start on October 16 or 19. The cast is expected to gather to read scripts and start rehearsing on October 8. 'We're filming right up until the summer,' he told TV Guide.
There’s “six or seven” more months of production left to do.
Although the cast began shooting in October, they still have a long way to go. 'We’ve got six or seven months left,' Turner told Variety. That means they should be done filming by June or July in 2018. The Hollywood Reporter previously reported that production could even run as late as August.
Mysterious huts have appeared on set.
Fans have noticed huts at Titanic Studios in Belfast, where the GoT cast and crew usually film. There were three structures spotted—two sized like the hut pictured below, and a larger one. There's no confirmation on what the set pieces are for yet, but it's possible they're Dotrhaki-related. Read more here.
Multiple endings will be filmed.
HBO's president of programming Casey Bloys revealed that the GoT team will film multiple endings for the series finale to ensure no spoilers are leaked during production. The tactic is aimed to trick the paparazzi snapping and leaking scenes being filmed. It also means that actors won't even know the real ending chosen for the show until it airs.
Read more here:
Two new roles are being cast.
Ahead of production, news broke that GoT was looking to cast two new child roles for the final season. The first is for a 'Northern girl' around the age of eight, and the second is for a boy from a poor background of the same age, or a few years older. The actors who land these roles will start filming in November, according to the listing obtained by fan site Watchers on the Wall.
Director Miguel Sapochnik is returning.
The director behind epic GoT episodes like 'Hardhome,' 'Battle of the Bastards,' and 'The Winds of Winter' might be signed on for Season 8. Watchers on the Wall noticed that one of the show’s cinematographers, Fabian Wagner, recently shared a photo on Instagram featuring some of the GoT crew, including Sapochnik.
'Back on Game of Thrones for prep of the final season and the team is back together. Good times even though winter is already here,' his caption reads. Does that mean the director is making his return?
Others photographed include assistant Caroline Alderson, VFX supervisor Joe Bauer, VFX producer Steve Kullback.
Director David Nutter is also coming back.
Actor Jon Bradley (Sam Tarly) confirmed that both Sapochnik and Nutter have returned for Season 8 in an interview with Huffington Post. Nutter has helmed episodes in Seasons 2, 3, and 5, but his most memorable was likely 'The Rains of Castamere' (Season 3 Episode 9), which featured The Red Wedding.
With him and Sapochnik back on GoT, Bradley says every episode in the final season will be at the same caliber of the show's Episode 9s. (The ninth season in each season is usually the most gripping, suspenseful, or action-packed.)
'You can tell that because we’ve got directors who have been in charge of some of the most huge setpieces in the past doing episodes all throughout the season,' Bradley said.
The final episode will be directed by David Benioff and Dan Weiss.
Bradley added that GoT's final episode is 'in the right hands' under the direction of its showrunners, Benioff and Weiss. 'I think they’ve done an incredible job with this series. They deserve everything they get, and they deserve the right to finish this show off in the way they see fit,' he told Huff Post.
The budget is $15 million—per episode.
Variety reports that this could be GoT's most expensive season yet, with a whopping budget of $15 million per episode. Compare that to the show's previous expenses: Season 2 reportedly cost $6 million per episode, and Season 6 apparently cost $10 million per episode.
The actors are reportedly being fed lines through an earpiece.
Security has been tighter than ever before for this season of GoT, following the big HBO hack that took place during Season 7. Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister) revealed that the actors are receiving their lines through an earpiece, to avoid leaks.
'[After] the hack happened, we're not even going to get the script. Now we are going to do a scene, we will be told what's going to happen and then we roll,' he said in an interview on Skavlan. 'We're all going to have earpieces for the scene and then someone's going to tell you the line and then you're going to do the line.'
That secretive tactic might not apply to the whole show, however. Liam Cunningham (Ser Davos Seaworth) said the cast received their scripts, and both Sophie Turner and Kit Harington have talked about their final read-throughs with the rest of the cast in recent interviews. So maybe the earpieces will only be used during crucial scenes or plot twists.
Sansa will face a “big challenge.”
Just because Littlefinger won’t be in Season 8, that doesn’t mean Sansa is completely safe. 'This season, there’s a new threat, and all of a sudden she finds herself somewhat back in the deep end,' Turner told Variety. 'And without Littlefinger, it’s a test for her of whether she can get through it. It’s a big challenge for her, without this master manipulator having her back. This season is more a passionate fight for her than a political, manipulative kind of fight.'
The leader of the Golden Company has reportedly been cast.
Marc Rissman (The Last Kingdom) was reportedly cast as Harry Strickland, who commands The Golden Company, the most powerful army in Essos, which Cersei Lannister has purchased to help conquer Westeros for good. Watchers on the Wall caught a hint of the German actor’s casting when they saw the role listed on his Spotlight acting resume online, but it has since been deleted. Another fan site Winter Is Coming said Rissman said he’d work under 'various' directors, suggesting he’ll appear in multiple episodes. Does that mean we’ll have a lot of war scenes in Season 8?
A new role named Sarra was cast.
Eagle-eyed fans on Watchers on the Wall noticed that actress Danielle Galligan’s resume on her talent management profile had been updated to say she was cast as 'Sarra' in 'Game of Thrones (Series 8)' and will be working with director David Nutter (who helmed the Red Wedding episode). Like Rissman, Galligan has since removed her GoT role from her profile. (But Mashable got a screenshot before it disappeared.)
The role of Sarra hasn’t been confirmed, but fans believe it refers to Sarra Frey, who appears in the Song of Ice and Fire books. She’s one of Walder Frey’s granddaughters, and one of the young women Robb Stark could’ve married. According to the GoT Wiki, Sarra has appeared in the show before, portrayed by a different actress, in Nutter's Red Wedding episode.
There’s also new role for a young girl.
Watchers on the Wall obtained a posting for the character, which is to be played by a 9- to 11-year-old 'sad-eyed young girl.' Her role reportedly revolves around 'one excellent scene with a leading cast member.' But we don’t know which one yet. The memo also specified that the girl has a southern accent instead of a northern one, which leads fans to believe she may be from King’s Landing or the Riverlands.
Erica Gonzales is the Senior Culture Editor at ELLE.com, where she oversees coverage on TV, movies, music, books, and more. She was previously an editor at HarpersBAZAAR.com. There is a 75 percent chance she's listening to Lorde right now.
