With last week’s shocking Game of Thrones episode reaching over 7.5 million live viewers, the HBO series has once again proved to fans why it stands as one of the best on television. And, as the show’s current season wraps this week, reports are surfacing that some stars from Game of Thrones are in for a big pay raise.
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In an exclusive article by Deadline, the site is reporting that main cast members Peter Dinklage (Tyrion), Lena Headey (Cersei), Kit Harrington (Jon Snow), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys), and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime) will be renegotiating their contracts to pull in $500,000 an episode for Season 7. And, while none of this is yet confirmed, it’s expected that the actors will receive the same pay for their appearances in Season 8 when it should air.
While HBO refuses to comment on contract negotiations with its cast members, the channel would do well to keep its biggest players on-board for now. While the raise is a big jump for the cast’s current pay, actors such as Kit Harrington have started to move beyond Game of Thrones and star in new projects which might shift their needed focus elsewhere.
Of course, in true Game of Thrones style, these new contract negotiations do not guarantee that the actors will star in the whole season. With the show’s penchant for killing off characters on seeming whims, some of the cast members will be lucky to survive until Season 8 reaches viewers. However, the upcoming two seasons of Game of Thrones will likely have shorter episode orders than its current run. It’s rumored that Season 7 may pull in seven episodes while the following season rounds out with an even six.
The last contract negotiations for these actors happened back in 2014 while the show was undergoing filming on its fifth season. It was then reported that the cast would be racking up their $300,000 per episode, and since then, Game of Thrones has only grown more popular. There is currently no word out on contract negotiations for fellow cast members like Sophie Turner (Sansa) or Maisie Williams (Arya Stark), but if the show continues bringing in ratings like it does now, then HBO’s juggernaut might be spending big on Game of Thrones in the future.
