Game Of Thrones Season 8: 8 Things We Already Know

2. It Has An Insane Budget

Season 8 may only have six episodes, but it's shaping up to be the biggest season of Game of Thrones yet. Along with that crazy production schedule is a mammoth budget, with reports that each episode will cost $15 million. For context, the per episode budget was around $6m in Season 1, and $10m in Seasons 6 & 7, so this is a major increase.

It's easy to see where that money is going though, with more action, more of the army of the dead, more dragons, and potentially other creatures such as ice spiders or elephants (for the Golden Company). Maybe we'll even get a sighting of Ghost, if we're lucky.

It's also been reported that these six episodes are going to be bigger than we're used to, with the Season 7 finale - The Dragon and the Wolf - providing the template for how they may shape up. That clocked in at around 80 minutes, and it's expected each of the six episodes of Season 8 will be feature-length. We saw this work well with the S7 finale, and if they're only doing six episodes then it makes sense they'd be longer than usual. Liam Cunningham spoke to TV Guide about this matter, saying:

"[The episodes are] definitely going to be bigger and what I hear is longer. We’re filming right up until the summer. When you think about it, up until last season we’d have six months to do ten episodes, so we’re [doing] way more than that for six episodes. So that obviously will translate into longer episodes."

John Bradley, who plays Sam Tarly, also said the episodes would be "monumental" and like six "episode 9s".