On Monday, HBO announced that production of Game of Thrones seventh season would begin in the summer of 2016 and launch in the summer of 2017, a slight delay from its typical March/April premiere frame.
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Within the weeks since the show’s sixth season wrapped up, the showrunners revealed that the series does not have another 20 episodes remaining despite having two seasons coming up. The remaining seasons will, instead, be shortened, totalling no more than 15 episodes between them.
The network has now revealed that the show’s seventh season will feature seven episodes, leaving an estimated six if the total series number of 73 predicted by Benioff and Weiss holds true.
“Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys tells THR. “Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”
Game of Thrones ranks as HBO’s most-watched series ever and is its longest-running show currently on the air.
