No more 'Game of Thrones' till 2019? It's looking that way
Actor Liam Cunningham reveals that filming may not end until summer 2018, and post-production takes time.
- Co-author of two Gen X pop-culture encyclopedia for Penguin Books. Won "Headline Writer of the Year" award for 2017, 2014 and 2013 from the American Copy Editors Society. Won first place in headline writing from the 2013 Society for Features Journalism.
Wait until 2019? Cersei Lannister (Lena Headey) is going to need some more wine.
Can you do it, "Game of Thrones" fans? Can you spend the remainder of 2017 and all of 2018 just watching reruns, re-reading the books, and wishing George R.R. Martin would finish writing "Winds of Winter" already?
You may have to. Liam Cunningham, who plays Ser Davos Seaworth, told TV Guide on Thursday that even though "Thrones" upcoming final season has only six episodes, it will take longer than any previous season to shoot, and may run right up to summer 2018.
"[The episodes are] definitely going to be bigger and what I hear is, longer," Cunningham told TV Guide. "We're filming right up until the summer. When you think about it, up until last season we'd have six months to do ten episodes, so we're [doing] way more than that for six episodes. So that obviously will translate into longer episodes."
Fans already knew (and were more than a little excited) about the final season's movie-length episodes. But if filming is beginning now (TV Guide reports Cunningham will have his first table read on Sunday) and running till summer, it's looking more and more likely that HBO won't take viewers back to Westeros until 2019.
Not only does "Thrones" require an extensive amount of post-production time once filming has ended, as Entertainment Weekly points out, HBO's western theme park-gone-wild show, "Westworld," is scheduled for a 2018 return. The network is likely to want to concentrate on just one powerhouse show at a time, keeping "Thrones" fans waiting for that by-now-infamous winter.
But the wait will likely be worth it.
"'Game of Thrones' is not like any other show," Cunningham said in the interview. "It's nuts."
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