‘Game Of Thrones’ Final Season Air Date Narrowed Down To First Half Of 2019

Game of Thrones has finally released the tiniest morsel of information about its final season, reports Entertainment Weekly. All that was known for the longest time was that the final six episodes would air sometime in 2019, but other than that, HBO has been rather tight-lipped about the show. Now Casey Bloys, HBO’s programming president, has revealed that it will be in the first half of 2019. That’s something, right?

Many of the previous seasons started at the end of March or beginning of April, so perhaps that’s what they’re shooting for. Unlike most network and cable shows, which would shoot for February or May, both sweeps months — the time of the year when ratings matter the most because they help establish ad revenue — that doesn’t matter for HBO. The pay cable service makes money off subscriptions, not from commercials. So, unfortunately, that won’t help to narrow down the possible premiere date.

EW also had news about the prequel, which was rumored to start shooting in October. Wrong — they now say. Those reports came from the Belfast Telegraph saying it would start in a few months but as EW duly noted, the show hasn’t even been cast yet. There’s no way they’d be able to start shooting in a few months. Well, Bloys was able to clear that up as well.

“I don’t know where that report came from, we’re hoping to go into production in early ’19.”

According to EW, “Bloys made the comments at the Television Critics Association’s press tour in Beverly Hills on Wednesday.”

Meanwhile, the show has gone to great pains to stop spoilers from being revealed about the final season of the cult hit. That, of course, hasn’t stopped infinite fan theories from being bandied about. It’s hard to imagine a show that has inspired more speculation (OK, maybe ABC’s Lost) about how the show will end, but this isn’t a new phenomenon. Fans have been trying to guess every moment along the way since the pilot.

They did have help when there were five novels that the show used as source material, which they could point to and dissect, but the show has lasted so long, it’s surpassed the time covered in George R.R. Martin’s brilliant books. Not only that, the show has actually veered away from some of the bigger plot points, which uprooted a couple of theories early on. No matter, guessing is half the fun but every fan would rather not have to guess when the show is returning. That should have been the easiest spoiler to get.