‘Game Of Thrones’: If Filming Time Is An Indicator, Season 8 Should Be Epic

Over seven seasons of HBO’s Game of Thrones, viewers have had to get used to shorter seasons. Season 1 opened with 10 episodes, but, by Season 7, only seven episodes were developed. Now, with the final season of Game of Thrones, fans can expect to see only six episodes.

However, these shorter seasons actually have longer airtime in some of the episodes and the battles presented in Season 7 were spectacular to view so fans could forgive the network for robbing them of three to four episodes for the final two seasons of Game of Thrones.

And, as Fansided has also pointed out, filming for these shorter seasons have also run longer than normal filming times for the few seasons of Game of Thrones. After crunching the numbers, Fansided discovered that Season 6 of Game of Thrones ran for approximately five months. This season then went on to include the spectacular scenes including the Battle of the Bastards and the destruction of the Sept of Baelor. So, even after filming was complete, production was still underway as the special effects and CGI were worked into episodes that required it.

Filming for Season 7 took approximately six months. Once again, this season certainly upped the ante once more in regard to visually stunning episodes and battle scenes that are like none seen before on the small screen.

As for Season 8? Well, filming is still underway and is not expected to finish until “the end of June” according to Fansided. They estimate that filming time for the final season of Game of Thrones will take at least seven months, and even as long as eight months to complete.

Of course, once filming is complete, production will still continue and that is why viewers will not get to see the finished product until 2019. It is also known that some episodes of Season 8 of Game of Thrones will run much longer than normal episodes after Kit Harington (Jon Snow) revealed to the Mirror at the start of the year that some episodes in Season 8 may be up to 90 minutes long.

“We know we have six episodes—we are not sure whether they will run for 70 minutes or even 90 minutes.”

And, considering how HBO seems to want to better their visual effects with every season, fans can also likely look forward to a final season that is spectacularly epic from a visual viewpoint as well.

Season 8 of Game of Thrones will air on HBO. As yet, no official premiere date has been made beyond 2019. However, Maisie Williams did let it slip during an interview with Metro that Season 8 will premiere in April of that year.