2 Attachment(s)
Game of Thrones Final Season Might Premiere Later In 2019 Than Expected
One of the most anticipated television series of 2019 is the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones, and now there’s reason to believe the fate of Westeros won’t be decided until later in the year. The series’ eighth and final season was already delayed to allow creators David Benioff and D.B. Weiss the necessary time to write the scripts, for production to take place on what will reportedly be much longer than normal episodes, and for the premium cabler (and many of the actors involved in the series) to begin building anticipation for not only the end of one of television’s biggest shows ever, but also to better lead in to the planned prequel series set some 10,000 years in Westeros’ past.
The final season already has its work cut out for it. Not only does it have to satisfy fans of both the books and the immensely popular series, but it also has to fill a slot in HBO’s lineup that will give the network the most bang for its buck. While the series had staked out space in April for several years, season 7 premiered a few months later, in the summer of 2017. If Joe Bauer, the visual effects supervisor for Game of Thrones, is correct in his estimation, it sounds as though that could mean season 8 will hit around that time or later.
Bauer said as much in a recent interview with The Huffington Post, in which the topic of the final season’s Emmy chances was broached. Bauer tole the publication: “In two years we’ll be eligible for the Season 8 work, which we’re just beginning now.” He went on to discuss how long the effects work will take, and also shared some insight into when work on the prequel spinoff will begin as well.
Quote:
“We’re going to be toiling away on Season 8 until May of 2019, so it’s eight or nine months away. But the prequel is starting to shoot in February, at least the pilot. So we’ll still have quite a lot to do on Season 8 when they’re beginning.”
Aside from eager fans being disappointed they’ll have to wait longer than (presumably) expected for the final six episodes of the series, HBO will have some interesting decisions to make when it comes to its scheduling in 2019. The network is certainly not without options when it comes to filling the April to June timeframe, as it has Big Little Lies season 2 and the second season of one of the best shows on TV so far this year, Succession. One will be an event series, and the other represents the future of HBO that’s not tied up in the history of Westeros, so some of the fun in finding out where Game of Thrones lands will be seeing what HBO puts up in its presumed place.
Game of Thrones season 8 is expected to premiere in 2019 on HBO.
