Game of Thrones: Season 8 Episode Count Still in Flux

Season 7 is slated to return in summer 2017, but a premiere date hasn't yet been determined.

By Terri Schwartz

HBO is gearing up for Game of Thrones to end with Season 8, but the network still hasn't formally renewed it for the final season.

HBO programming president Casey Bloys explained what the hold up is at the 2017 winter TV Critics Association press tour, saying it's a matter of finalizing the episode order for the final season.

“The only thing we’re working out is how many episodes they want to do,” Bloys told TVLine when asked why Season 8 hasn't been officially announced. “They’re still figuring it out because I think they’re trying to get a shape of the season."

Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss have said that they want to do around six more hours of the series after the seven-episode Season 7. That led many to conclude Season 8 would be six episodes long, but recent comments have suggested that's still up in the air.

Bloys told TVLine he "hopes" Benioff and Weiss ultimately deliver more than six episodes for Season 8. "They always do what they think [will yield] the best version of the show. It’s all about how many they’re comfortable [with]," he said. "But I’ll always take more."

Game of Thrones: Season 7 will soon finish production and is slated for a summer 2017 premiere date. IGN asked Bloys when exactly in the summer TV season the series will air, to which he said, "Still up in the air, but I would say 'mid.'"

HBO is coming off the successful launch of another big genre series, Westworld, which was nominated for multiple Golden Globes and won several of IGN's Best of TV in 2016 awards. With the delayed return of Game of Thrones, we asked Bloys if there was any concern in the lull of quality sci-fi/fantasy programming on the network.

"My hope is Westworld will be in the first half of 2018. I've got two really great, big genre shows, but I don't want the whole slate to be all feeling like big sci-fi stuff, although they're two great shows," Bloys said. "We're trying to do other things like we have David Simon's show coming up, we're doing a family drama, Big Little Lies. I'm trying to have more variations in the slate. Hopefully sci-fi fans will be OK from the summer of '17 to sometime first half of '18 for Westworld."

Terri Schwartz is Entertainment Editor at IGN. Talk to her on Twitter at @Terri_Schwartz.

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