Despite its massive success, HBO recently confirmed that it is making some major changes in the upcoming "Game of Thrones" Season7. The seventh season of the series will be released in summer of 2017, instead of the typical spring release, which was done over the last six seasons. Moreover, the upcoming season will be trimmed down to just seven episodes, cutting down from the usual ten per season.
Aside from these major changes, HBO also confirmed that shooting locations for "Game of Thrones" Season 7 will be based in Spain, Iceland, and Northern Ireland, according to Vox. It has been a couple of years since the "Game of Thrones" production team used Iceland as a significant shooting location which was primarily used for backdrops like the North of the Wall scenes, as well as the Wildling camps.
In a statement acquired by Entertainment Weekly, HBO president of programming Casey Bloys said, "Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss felt that the storyline of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing. Instead of the show's traditional spring debut, we're moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule."
Benioff and Weiss also said during a UFC Unfiltered that the next season's production of "Game of Thrones" Season 7 will commence a little later in order to achieve a genuine winter feel for the upcoming episodes.
The producers are aiming to close "Game of Thrones" Season 7 at 73 hours. The two added that the eighth and, probably, final season of the series will close in six episodes. HBO has yet to confirm their plans about the eighth season of the series which means that the possibility of it being the last season is not yet official.
