Every season of Game of Thrones to date has premiered in either late-March or April. That’s not the case for season seven, which won’t debut until summer 2017, because irony. “We’re starting a bit later because at the end of this season, winter is here,” co-showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said on the UFC Unfiltered podcast, “and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes any more.” Also, instead of the usual 10 episodes, the new season will only be seven episodes long. But according to Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah “Friend Zone” Mormont, viewers won’t notice the difference.
“They are taking the length of time it takes to shoot 10 episodes to shoot just seven this year and six next year,” he told Radio Times. “There are 15 more hours left in Thrones as we understand it… but that’s as far as we know. I think the scale and size of the set pieces, the world that is being created, it’s just getting more and more extraordinary and they feel they need that time to shoot seven hours as opposed to 10.” Fewer episodes with the same budget means more money spent on battles and dragons. Worth it.
When asked if Jorah will live until the six-episode final season in 2018, Glen replied, “I don’t know, of course, if I am going to make the last one. I am sort of doing a head count, but I think it’s certainly under 10 people who were in the original pilot and have been in every season since. I have grown very attached to it. I love the people involved. Dan and David are very benign showrunners and very good people.” If only grayscale was benign, too…
(Via Radio Times)
