Iain Glen has explained why Game of Thrones season 8 will take so long to shoot. HBO has yet to firm down its premiere date for the fantasy drama’s final season, with rumors suggesting that fans may have to wait until 2019 to witness the epic conclusion to the wars for Westeros.
While fans await fresh content from The Seven Kingdoms, hype continues to bubble away nicely: Samwell Tarly actor John Bradley has described the scale of season 8 as “monumental”; some number-crunching has revealed that season 8 will be the show’s most expensive run yet; Miguel Sapochnik of Hardhome has been confirmed for a return to the director’s chair; and Maisie Williams has been showing off her knife skills in an awe-inspiring viral video.
Watchers On The Wall has unearthed some interesting details from Iain Glen, the actor behind Jorah Mormont. Speaking at Stockholm Comic-Con, Glen revealed that the Game of Thrones cast will unite on October 9th for a read-through of the season 8 scripts. He also explained that prior seasons of the show utilized two primary units: a duo of camera crews, who work at the same time, shooting in different locations around the globe. But now that the show is bringing all of its characters together, uniting the plot strands and decreasing the number of locations, that isn’t going to be possible. As Glen put it:
As Watchers On The Wall notes, this piece of information aligns perfectly with what fans already know about the Game of Thrones season 8 production schedule. It’s believed that shooting will take ten months - roughly double the usual duration - and now that makes sense. With only one camera crew, they will be capturing material at a slower pace than the previous seasons, which had two teams working in tandem.
“We’re all starting to occupy the same territory, we’re all starting to be in the same storylines and so they can’t [have two filming units] anymore. I think this last season will take much longer to shoot because they can only use one unit because we’re all in the same sort of scenes.”
However, as logical as this is, it’s still frustrating for the fans. This longer-than-usual gap between episodes represents the fandom’s equivalent of The Long Night: a long, painful time that everyone must suffer through. In the meantime, to keep you occupied, HBO has released an animated video exploring the history of Westeros. Also, work is underway on numerous spin-off series that could follow in Thrones’ footsteps.
Game of Thrones season 8 does not have an official premiere date yet.
Source: Watchers On The Wall
