The eighth and final season of the fantasy drama television series Game of Thrones was announced by HBO in July 2016. Unlike the first six seasons that each had ten episodes and the seventh that had seven episodes, the eighth season will have only six episodes. Like the previous season, it will largely consist of original content not found currently in George R. R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, and will instead adapt material Martin has revealed to showrunners about the upcoming novels in the series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.
The season will be adapted for television by David Benioff and D. B. Weiss. Filming officially began on October 23, 2017. The season is scheduled to premiere in 2019.
Video Game of Thrones (season 8)
Episodes
Maps Game of Thrones (season 8)
Cast
Main cast
- Peter Dinklage as Tyrion Lannister
- Nikolaj Coster-Waldau as Jaime Lannister
- Lena Headey as Cersei Lannister
- Emilia Clarke as Daenerys Targaryen
- Kit Harington as Jon Snow
- Liam Cunningham as Davos Seaworth
- Sophie Turner as Sansa Stark
- Maisie Williams as Arya Stark
- Nathalie Emmanuel as Missandei
- Gwendoline Christie as Brienne of Tarth
- John Bradley as Samwell Tarly
- Isaac Hempstead Wright as Bran Stark
- Rory McCann as Sandor "The Hound" Clegane
- Iain Glen as Jorah Mormont
- Conleth Hill as Varys
- Carice van Houten as Melisandre
- Jerome Flynn as Bronn
- Joe Dempsie as Gendry
Supporting cast
- Ben Crompton as Eddison Tollett
- Hafþór Júlíus Björnsson as Gregor Clegane
- Jacob Anderson as Grey Worm
- Rupert Vansittart as Yohn Royce
- Marc Rissmann as Harry Strickland
Production
Crew
Series creators and executive producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss will serve as showrunners for the eighth season. The directors for the eighth season were announced in September 2017. Miguel Sapochnik, who previously directed "The Gift" and "Hardhome" on season 5, as well as "Battle of the Bastards" and "The Winds of Winter" on season 6 will return as director. He will divide up direction of the first five episodes with David Nutter, who had directed two episodes on seasons two, three and five. The final episode of the show will be directed by Benioff and Weiss, who have previously directed one episode each.
At the show's South by Southwest panel on March 12, 2017, Benioff and Weiss announced the writers for the show to be Dave Hill (episode 1) and Bryan Cogman (episode 2). The showrunners will then divide up the screenplay for the remaining four episodes amongst themselves.
Writing
Writing for the eighth season started with a 140-page outline. Benioff said that the divvying up process and who should write what section became more difficult, being that "this would be the last time that we would be doing this."
Filming
In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, HBO programming president Casey Bloys stated that instead of the series finale being a feature film, the final season would be "six one-hour movies" on television. He continued, "The show has proven that TV is every bit as impressive and in many cases more so, than film. What they're doing is monumental." Filming officially began on October 23, 2017.
Episodes
Co-creators David Benioff and D. B. Weiss have said that the seventh and eighth season would likely consist of fewer episodes, stating that after season six, they were "down to our final 13 episodes after this season. We're heading into the final lap." Benioff and Weiss stated that they were unable to produce 10 episodes in the show's usual 12 to 14 month time frame, as Weiss said, "It's crossing out of a television schedule into more of a mid-range movie schedule." HBO confirmed in July 2016, that the seventh season would consist of seven episodes, and would premiere later than usual in mid-2017 because of the later filming schedule. Benioff and Weiss later confirmed that the eighth season will consist of six episodes, and is expected to premiere later than usual for the same reason.
Benioff and Weiss spoke about the end of the show, saying, "From the beginning we've wanted to tell a 70-hour movie. It will turn out to be a 73-hour movie, but it's stayed relatively the same of having the beginning, middle and now we're coming to the end. It would have been really tough if we lost any core cast members along the way, I'm very happy we've kept everyone and we get to finish it the way we want to." The season is set to air in 2019.
Music
Ramin Djawadi is set to return as the composer of the show for the eighth season.
References
External links
- Game of Thrones - official US site
- Game of Thrones - official UK site
- Game of Thrones - The Viewers Guide on HBO.com
- Making Game of Thrones on HBO.com
- List of Game of Thrones episodes on IMDb
- List of Game of Thrones episodes at TV.com
Source of the article : Wikipedia