‘Game of Thrones’ season 7 delayed, to run for 7 episodes

MANILA, Philippines – Winter has come to Westeros, but unfortunately for the cast and crew of Game of Thrones, that’s not the case in real life.

The Game of Thrones season 7 premiere date would be delayed to Summer 2017 (around June, July, and August) – later than the usual, which is in the spring (around April).

“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,” said Casey Bloys, president for HBO programming, as quoted by Entertainment Weekly.

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

But this isn’t the only major change that HBO is rolling out for its hit series: the next season will consist of 7 episodes – less than the usual 10.

Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss also recently told the UFC Unfiltered podcast that there wasn’t an air date yet as they would be starting production “a bit later because at the end of this season, ‘Winter is here’ — and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes any more. So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim grey weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot.”

In a previous interview with Deadline Hollywood, the showrunners had floated the idea of capping the entire series in 2 more seasons. (READ: ‘Game of Thrones’: 2 seasons left – showrunners)

“It’s two more seasons we’re talking about. From pretty close to the beginning, we talked about doing this in 70-75 hours, and that’s what we’ll end up with. Call it 73 for now,” said David.

Game of Thrones leads the field for the 2016 Primetime Emmy Awards with 23 nominations, including supporting actor nominations for stars Kit Harington (Jon Snow), Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), and Maisie Williams (Arya Stark). – Rappler.com