HBO has confirmed Game of Thrones will be returning for its eighth and final season in 2019.
The announcement of the new season, which will consist of six episodes, has come as great news to the heaps of Game of Thrones fans, which has been revealed as officially the most bingeable box set show of all time.
Although we do have to wait until next year, eugh.
If you don’t know by now, the incredible HBO fantasy series tells the story of a warring group of noble families, battling for the Iron Throne of Westeros, but as the story reaches its climax, there’s a more deadly foe marching towards them.
The show has won multiple awards and has been nominated this year for the Best Television Series of the year at the Golden Globes.
The global phenomenon has taken the world by storm – its leading stars are now household names and as the show runs to an end over the next couple of years, the world’s eyes are on HBO and G.R.R. Martin to decide what to do next in the mythical setting of Westeros.
HBO also confirmed season eight will be directed by David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, David Nutter and Miguel Sapochnik – and the writers for the new season are David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Bryan Cogman and Dave Hill.
The executive producers of the series are David Benioff, D.B. Weiss, Carolyn Strauss, Frank Doelger and Bernadette Caulfield, with co-executive producers, Bryan Cogman, Guymon Casady, Vince Gerardis and George R.R. Martin.
Following a serious hacking last year, HBO has gone to even more extreme lengths to protect the final season of Game of Thrones.
Not only is the studio going to film fake scenes to confuse fans, they’ll also not be giving actors scripts, to stop any potential leaks.
In an interview on the Scandinavian chat show Skavlan, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, who plays Jaime Lannister in the hit show, revealed the unusual and extreme measures.
He said the cast are ‘not even going to get the scripts’ before filming:
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This may have something to do with a hacker known only as ‘Mr Smith’, who leaked the scripts for the first five episodes of the last season, online in August.
Back in November, plot details for the seventh season made their way onto Reddit thanks to another major leak.
Nikolaj also revealed how during the first couple of seasons, the cast always got the normal hard-copy scripts in advance of the cameras rolling.
Yet as the show became more and more popular, security was tightened meaning the scripts are now distributed on digital files.
More recently, actors just got their lines, not a full script, through a verified email account.
However, this season is going to be the most secure yet, with the actors even being given earpieces so they can be fed their dialogue to deliver, line by line.
Can’t wait.
