And you thought waiting for Winter to come was excrutiating enough: now you're going to have to wait until Summer to see what's happening in Westeros.
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HBO has officially confirmed that Season 7 of the incredibly popular show will not return until summer 2017, a couple of months after the usual April launch date. There's also confirmation of the widely expected revelation that the show will move to a 7 episode format.
The show-makers say that the forthcoming season will be shot in Northern Ireland, Spain, and Iceland. A return to the latter implies - as expected - that there will be a lot of wintery scenes; Iceland was previously used as the set for areas beyond the wall.
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Casey Bloys, president of HBO programming had the following 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.”
Benioff and Weiss had previously teased a later start date too:
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"We’re starting 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.”
HBO are yet to confirm that the final season (8) will be limited to 6 episodes, but that too is expected, even if it's not announced until after 7 airs. And by then HBO should have picked up a healthy number of the 23 Emmys they've been nominated for.
If last season is anything to go by, the wait will be worth it, but that doesn't mean it's going to be any less excruciating in the meantime.