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‘Game Of Thrones’ Season Premiere: Last Season To Only Have 6 Episodes?

By Bernadette Giacomazzo
Published on: 13:58 PST, Mar 12, 2017

There’s a bit of bad news for fans of the hit HBO show Game of Thrones: after the season premiere in July, there will much less of the show to enjoy. That means that while the Game of Thrones season premiere will kick off seven episodes, the last-ever season will only have six episodes, for a total of 73 episodes in the series as a whole.

That’s the word, according to Entertainment Weekly, whose latest news about the Game of Thrones season premiere is followed by this bit of discouraging news. The outlet spoke to David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, who are the show’s two producers, during the Game of Thrones panel at South by Southwest. Benioff and Weiss confirmed that the last season of the show will also have the least number of episodes.

“It’s only going to be six episodes for the final season. 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 Daily Beast was also at South by Southwest, and they reported on what else we can expect from the Game of Thrones season premiere. Maisie Williams, who plays Arya, and Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark, made a surprise appearance at the festival, and they were quizzing their “fun uncles” about some of their favorite memories of the show.

“Benioff and Weiss praised the young Brits for avoiding ‘becoming Biebers’ in the face of worldwide fame — and joked again and again about how much they relished writing their characters’ supposed deaths.”

“We both wanted to kill Sansa so badly,” quipped Weiss. Only the tiniest tidbits of what to expect in Season 7 escaped the infamously spoiler-phobic creators — Tyrion gets the season’s “best line of dialogue,” apparently — though they admitted the occasional leak is inevitable.

“Just look at what’s happening now, even the CIA can’t keep information private,” said Benioff. “What hope do we have?”

Finally, the latest news from CNET about the Game of Thrones season premiere suggests that Benioff and Weiss cast music superstar Ed Sheeran in a cameo role for one very important reason: because they wanted to give a nice surprise to Maisie Williams, who is a huge fan of Sheeran’s.

Fortunately, Sheeran is a fan of Game of Thrones, as well.

“Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss said they had been trying to book the English singer-songwriter as a guest star for years to surprise Maisie Williams, the actress who plays Arya Stark — and who is a big fan of Sheeran.

“This year we finally did it,” Benioff said. He and Weiss were speaking on a panel at the SXSW Conference and Festivals, moderated by Williams and her co-star Sophie Turner, who plays her sister, Sansa Stark. Turner joked that she’s “still waiting on Bieber” to make a cameo, but Weiss assured her that Justin Bieber would make it on (never-going-to-happen) season nine.

The Game of Thrones season premiere airs on HBO on July 16.

Will you be checking out the Game of Thrones season premiere? Leave your thoughts in the comments below.

[Featured Image by HBO]

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