Posted in: Movies, TV | Tagged: a song of ice and fire, game of thrones, george r r martin, HBO

Keeping Faithful To Books, HBO May Delay Final Season Of Game Of Thrones Until 2019

If there's one things fans of author George R. R. Martin have come to expect from the popular Game of Thrones series, it's consistency. Particularly, it's the knowledge that the final books in the series will consistently be delayed over and over again as Martin does literally anything else except finish writing them, despite HBO's Game of Thrones adaptations already overtaking its source material. But while fans who invested decades in the book series may never get to see it concluded, the show will be ending after just two more seasons. Season 7 airs this July, which means fans have been expecting the final season to air in 2018.

But that may not be the case, according to an interview with HBO programming president Casey Bloys on Entertainment Weekly. In order to keep the series, with its regular releases, from seeming too jarring for fans of the book series who are used to frustratedly checking Martin's LiveJournal page every day to see if the author will post an update on his progress, HBO has decided to become more ambiguous as to when they will air Season 8:

On the Dan and David side of things, they told me that they're not going to be involved in the prequels and instead are going to work on the final season for the next year and a half. Is that right?
Yep. I'm glad you asked that because that is one thing I want to clarify: By the time the final season airs, Dan and David will have been at this for 12 years. Which is an amazing fact. They didn't go and do movies in between seasons, they didn't set anything else up, they put everything — and are putting everything — into this show. They came into HBO with an idea for a show with a beginning, middle, and end, and they want to see it through. In conversations with them, they feel if their name is on the prequels — even in a passive way — it conveys some sort of expectation or responsibility. They want to enjoy the show as fans and don't want to worry about the scripts or production issues. We were hoping to have their names on it out of respect for them, but we understand why they don't want that.

So as of now, the final season could air in 2018 and/or in 2019 depending on their needs?
Yeah. They have to write the episodes and figure out the production schedule. We'll have a better sense of that once they get further into the writing.

So it might not be until 2019 when we get the ending to Game of Thrones. Martin might be able to set and miss three release windows for penultimate book The Winds Of Winter by that time!

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