The seventh season of Game of Thrones (coming July 16th) was pushed back several months due to a production schedule that needed to revolve around winter, but the eighth season may be pushed back even further, for vaguer reasons.
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, HBO programming chief Casey Bloys hinted that the eighth season (only six episodes long) might not air until 2019. Discussing why showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss aren’t going to be involved in any spinoff series in a major way, Bloys said, “By the time the final season airs, Dan and David will have been at this for 12 years.” Though Weiss and Benioff first met Martin in 2006, HBO didn’t order the pilot of Game of Thrones until November 2008, and production didn’t begin until October 2009. It’s not clear where Bloys is measuring from, but to me the math looks a little depressing.
The interviewer then asked, more explicitly, “So as of now, the final season could air in 2018 and / or in 2019 depending on their needs?” To which Bloys responded, “Yeah. They have to write the episodes and figure out the production schedule. We’ll have a better sense of that once they get further into the writing.” It’s pretty vague, but it certainly implies that HBO has given Benioff and Weiss permission to take their time.
time for everyone to slow way down and chill out
Though a Westeros-free 2018 would obviously disappoint Game of Thrones fans who can no longer fathom a summer without the show (me, too!), it’s possible that it’s… a good thing. Bloys hinted that the network still hasn’t determined how many Game of Thrones spinoffs it’s going to make (there are five in the very early stages of development), or when they would air, but they aren’t concerned about moving quickly: “Making Game of Thrones as good as possible is the No. 1 goal, and then we’ll see about these scripts. You’re not going to see a situation where the next show in the Thrones universe launches off the back of this one.”