‘Game of Thrones’ season 7 will premiere in summer 2017; filming plans revealed

As it turns out, you will be waiting a little while longer to see the seventh season of “Game of Thrones” unearthed over on HBO. The network confirmed this morning that the new episodes are going to be held until the summer of 2017 as a move to accommodate a later start for filming this season.

Specifically, here is what HBO’s programming president Casey Bloys had to say:

“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. Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule.”

Filming for this new season is going to begin later this summer, and will take place primarily in Northern Ireland, with some additional locations in Spain and Iceland being utilized. It is still surprising that the show seems to be avoiding filming in Dubrovnik, Croatia, given that this was the original location for King’s Landing. However, maybe it was determined at some point that this was too difficult a place to continue to utilize, or they simply don’t need to go out there anymore after having so many location shots in the can.

The long-standing rumor has also been confirmed that there will only be seven episodes to this coming season, which suggests that Benioff and Weiss are going to have their way when it comes to their plans to end the series. This means that, at least in theory, the eighth and final season would have only six episodes.

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