HBO previously stated that the need for more hostile weather in the upcoming seventh season of Game of Thrones, which promises to bring a harsh Winter to Westeros at last, would delay production of the show, likely pushing it beyond each season’s usual Spring premiere window next year. Now, it’s set in stone, as HBO has just announced today that Game of Thrones’ seventh season will air a bit later than usual in 2017, specifically, during the Summer season, rather than Spring. This likely places it for a debut around late June to mid-July, rather than the March/April months that new seasons of Game of Thrones usually debut in, even though we can probably expect the show’s sitcom running mates, Silicon Valley and Veep, to debut their new seasons in the usual Spring slots.
Game of Thrones’ seventh season will also contain less episodes than the usual ten to boot. Appropriately enough, the season will feature seven episodes, which was foreshadowed by showrunners, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who confirmed that the show’s seventh and eighth seasons, which will apparently be the show’s final seasons, will have reduced episode counts. They will also continue moving beyond the series of A Song of Ice and Fire source novels, which have still only published five of their planned seven books at this point, after this year’s sixth season of Game of Thrones started working in story elements from the in-development sixth book, The Winds of Winter.
Game of Thrones received an enormous 23 Emmy nominations last week, including for overall Outstanding Drama Series, a record-breaking number for any show’s third-year nominations. Nominations also included two for Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series (for Peter Dinklage and Kit Harrington), three for Outstanding Actress in a Drama Series (for Maisie Williams, Lena Headey, Emilia Clarke), one for Outstanding Guest Actor (for Max von Sydow), and multiple nominations for Outstanding Writing in a Drama Series, Outstanding Directing in a Drama Series, and more.
Critics also extensively praised most of the recently-wrapped Season Six, particularly its final two episodes, with our official reviews also being quite pleased with most of the season’s episodes, beyond a slight slump towards the season’s climax. We gave Season Six of Game of Thrones an overall score of 88% in the season’s cumulative review, making it one of our highest-scoring television seasons of the past syndication season (i.e. excluding Netflix shows like Daredevil and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt), alongside the third season of Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D., the second season of The Flash, the third season of Brooklyn Nine-Nine, the second season of The Last Man on Earth, and the second season of Better Call Saul.
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