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We won't see the eighth and final season of HBO's beloved flagship series Game Of Thrones this year, but that doesn't mean we can't keep our eye on all manner of bits and bobs about what's to come, does it?
Speaking to Vulture on the promotional circuit for his new feature My Dinner With Herve, Peter Dinklage shared a few insights into his Game Of Thrones character's trajectory over eight seasons of the show:
"He certainly developed a deeper sense of responsibility over the course of the show," said Dinklage. "He was a pretty irresponsible character to begin with. He used his position as the outcast of his family like an adolescent would. He pushed it in their [the Lannisters’] faces. The beauty of Tyrion is that he grew out of that mode in a couple of seasons and developed a strong sense of responsibility. Not morality, because he always had that, but what to do with his intelligence."
In the interview, Dinklage discusses his bittersweet experience filming the final season, noting how the final scene of one young castmember deeply affected the cast and crew. "Everybody was a wreck. This person had grown up on the show, you know? They were a child and now they were an adult. And then they’re done. It’s like we were witnessing this person saying good-bye to their childhood."
Previously, Sophie Turner, who plays Sansa Stark on the violent fantasy series, chatted to IGN about the conclusion of Game Of Thrones. It seems like it was a good experience for the actress overall, but she indicated that some viewers should prepare for a little disappoinment ahead.
"To be able to act out the way that it all ends. It was really satisfying for us," she told the site, before adding "Who knows if it will be satisfying for the fans?"
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The Dark Phoenix actress noted that she thinks "a lot of fans will be disappointed and a lot of fans will be over the moon" but that "it will be really interesting to see people's reactions, but for me reading the script, it was just heartbreaking to read. At the very final page of the script, it just says, 'End of Game Of Thrones', [and] that was really emotional."
More as we get it, of course.
Game Of Thrones season 8 air date
In cruel words that have been long dreaded, yet grimly anticipated, Game Of Thrones will meet its true TV death in season 8...and that final year will not air until 2019.
On the upside, the final season might consist of only feature-length episodes. For context, the only Game Of Thrones episode to run that long was the season 7 finale, which barely made the cut at 80 minutes flat. So there are good and bad tidings to anticipate as our watch continues.
Flick over to page 2 now for more info on Game Of Thrones' eighth season...
Game Of Thrones season 8 poster
Previously, we got a not-very-revealing poster for season 8...
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Game Of Thrones season 8 directors
The directors chosen to helm those last instalments have now been revealed - Miguel Sapochnik, David Nutter, and showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss.
Sapochnik previously directed two episodes in season 5, 'The Gift' and 'Hardhome', and in season 6 he was behind both 'Battle Of The Bastards' and the season finale 'The Winds Of Winter.'
Meanwhile, Nutter called the shots on 'The Old Gods And The New' and 'A Man Without Honor' back in season 2, and returned for The Rains Of Castamere in the third season. Season 5 saw him in the chair for 'The Dance Of Dragons' and 'Mother’s Mercy' also.
Benioff and Weiss, despite having a huge influence on the show, have only directed one previous episode in season 4, 'Two Swords', but they'll be overseeing the series finale and putting the finishing touches on the magnum opus.
As there are only 6 episodes in this season, it's extremely likely that two episodes will be alotted to each of the aforementioned, but we'll update you when we have confirmation on that.
Variety noted yesterday that each episode of the eighth season will cost $15 million a pop. That's...a lot. It's going to be absolutely huge, and the episodes will having running times to match - with the finale being a staggering 82 minutes long.
Game Of Thrones season 8 production
Jaime Lannister himself, Nikolaj Coster-Waldau, revealed to Collider that production on season 8 would get underway in October 2017.
“I knew what was going to happen for the first three seasons," he told them. "After that, it’s been a season at a time. You get the scripts a month before we start shooting, or six weeks, and then you know what’s going to happen that season. But, I don’t know what’s going to happen next season. We go back in October, so maybe in the next few weeks, we’ll get the scripts and I’ll find out. I’m very curious.”
Last autumn at the HBO panel during the Television Critics Association press tour, programming president Casey Bloys confirmed that the writing process was complete and that showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff were storyboarding season 8 to get a better idea of the mammoth task ahead when wrapping up the myriad complex storylines.
"It’s a big season,” Bloys admitted. “They’re trying to get a sense of how long it’s going to take them to shoot this.”
While that means that it'll be a while before the eighth season of Game Of Thrones finally appears, Bloys did say that the spin-off series' the cable giant is working on won't be hitting screens for at least a year after the main show is done and dusted, and that we won't be seeing any of the characters we know and love in any of those projects.
“The number one priority in all of this is the final season of Game Of Thrones,” he said. “I don’t want any spinoff or anything that detracts or distracts from that. That season will happen, my guess is it would be at least a year before you saw anything else. What I don’t want is the attention to be drawn from the final season, which I think is going to be epic and amazing, and somehow have the distraction of a new Game Of Thrones airing right after it. I think it’s best to separate it, and that’s what we’ll do.”
It looks like season 8 will be a mammoth task - not just in terms of scope, but also in terms of keeping spoilers at bay until the very last scenes play out on the small screen.
In a visit to Bethlehem’s Moravian College, Bloys revealed to students that in an effort to prevent anyone from ruining the ending of Game Of Thrones, the crew are planning to shoot multiple endings, so that even the cast don't 100% know what's in store.
"I know in Game Of Thrones, the ending, they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens," he confirmed. "You have to do that on a long show. Because when you’re shooting something, people know. So they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that there’s no real definitive answer until the end."
This approach is not a new thing, to be fair. TV shows have been doing this since the 80s! But we do wonder how far they'll go to protect those final episodes from leaking. They, er, didn't do an altogether great job of it with season 7, did they?
Pictures from the Game Of Thrones set in Moneyglass, Northern Ireland have been spilling online, and it seems that a big battle awaits in Winterfell when the series returns for it's eighth and final season next year.
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HBO's massive fantasy series isn't skimping on the budget for season 8, and with over 200 extras just for this one forthcoming battle scene at Winterfell, we'd imagine there may be a few more shocking deaths in store, including some of our very faves at the Stark hub, where the children of Ned await their final fates.
We heard quite a while back that there was a mammoth battle scene being filmed over at the Moneyglass base in Ireland for season 8, but we had no idea that it was still going on until very recently.
Jonathan Quinlan, assistant director on Thrones, posted this thank you note on his now-private Instagram account, and it reveals that we're in for one hell of a showdown at Winterfell when the show returns for its final season...
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55 nights in a row. Holy jaysus! This will have been the largest battle filmed in Thrones history, in fact, taking almost double the length of time granted to season 6's Battle Of The Bastards and season 7's Goldroad ambush, which both ate up just under a month of camera time when all was done and dusted.
We're officially strapped in, excited, and ready to witness "something that's never been done before".
You can read more about this (including, we warn you, bigger spoilers) over at Watchers On The Wall.