10 Key Details We Already Have About Game of Thrones Season 8

According to Variety, the final six episodes of Game of Thrones will cost a staggering $15 million EACH.

HBO is currently on the hunt for two new characters for season eight. There’s not a lot to go off of at the moment, but we do know that both of the casting notices are in search of young actors. The first is for a “Northern Girl” who’s between the ages of 8-10 and comes from a good family full of soldiers. The notice further describes her as “a straight-talking Northern-accented girl, someone remarkable for her pointlessness and integrity.”

The second role is for a boy of similar age to the female part, with a “physically fit and agile look” and a striking face. The character will be from a poor family, and the actor chosen must be able to “completely own the scenes that he appears in” (which hints that this isn’t merely a cameo).

Thanks to an adorable Instagram photo courtesy of Emilia Clarke (aka Daenerys Targaryen), we know that filming has almost definitely started. Clarke, who’s famously worn a wig in the past, permanently dyed her hair the same shade as Dany’s and used the hashtags “#khaleesikicksoff #gameofthrones #cominghomeneverfeltsogood” in her caption, which seems to allude to production starting on season eight.

All good things must come to an end, but we didn’t realize just how fast that end was going to come. While speaking at a panel at the SXSW Festival in Austin, TX, this March, showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss confirmed that the final season will only consist of six episodes.

“From the beginning, we’ve wanted to tell a 70-hour movie,” Benioff explained. “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.”

That sounds cool and all, but also NOOOOOOO.

It looks like it would be wise to think of season eight as a series of movies rather than a traditional TV show since the final six episodes will likely be the length of feature films. At the Con of Thrones convention, Game of Thrones sound designer Paula Fairfield disclosed to audiences that the season seven finale will reportedly be 82 minutes long and that episodes of season eight will each span 80 (or more) minutes.

The Hollywood Reporter revealed that the final four people tasked with directing the show are Miguel Sapochnik, David Nutter, and creators and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss. Nutter has directed six episodes of the show total (including “The Rains of Castamere”), while Sapochnik has also been at the helm of some important episodes, including “Hardhome,” “Battle of the Bastards,” and “The Winds of Winter.” As disappointing as it is to see that no female directors were tapped for the final season, at least we know that the last episodes are in reliable hands.

Season eight’s six episodes will be handled by four writers: Dave Hill on episode one, Bryan Cogman on episode two, and the remaining four split between Benioff and Weiss.

In an interview with The Huffington Post, Kit Harington said that the seventh and eighth seasons will be much more complex, even though they’re narrowing the focus of the show to fewer characters. “They spent an increasing amount of money on less episodes, so it’s gonna be much bigger in scale, the CGI,” he said. “We’re trying new things, experimenting with new camera techniques. I think we’re trying to break boundaries and push past boundaries in these final two seasons.”

He added that although living up to the hype of a show of this scale can be difficult, he thinks the production team is up for the challenge. “The worst thing would be to end without really pushing and trying new things. Even if it’s a failure, at least trying to go out with a bang.”

In July, HBO Programming President Casey Bloys confirmed that the rumblings about a potential spinoff aren’t unfounded, but nothing concrete has been solidified yet. By January, Bloys said that they’d been having “preliminary ongoing talks” with Game of Thrones scribe George R. R. Martin about the new show. “There are areas we are exploring,” he revealed. “But I wouldn’t point to any one and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.'”

From the looks of things, it seems the spinoff will likely be a continuation of characters or storylines in season eight, rather than a prequel (and also there might end up being FOUR of them!). At the SXSW panel, Benioff addressed the rumors but shot down his or Weiss’s future involvement. “The characters who maybe will survive, there’s always going to be this temptation to keep doing it . . . to do the spinoff show or do the sequel show and everything,” he said. “I think HBO might well do [another series] and I look forward to watching it and I think it would be great, but I think they should get new blood in.”

In an official press release, HBO confirmed what we had long suspected and dreaded. While no date has been officially nailed down, the final season will definitely be delayed until sometime in 2019. Can we get a month, though?!