Season 8

Season 8 of Game of Thrones was announced by D.B. Weiss and David Benioff on March 12, 2017. Like the seventh season, Season 8 will be shorter than previous seasons, consisting of six episodes, due to the smaller amount of story content remaining, as well as the increased production values and time required to film episodes involving larger set pieces than in previous seasons. Filming will begin in September 2017.

The season is expected to premiere in late 2018/early 2019.

Like the sixth and seventh seasons, Season 8 will be based on an outline of the two final, presently-unpublished novels in George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.

Season 8 will be the final season of Game of Thrones, though after the conclusion of Season 8 five potential "successor shows", more likely prequels, are certainly possible.

Production
For a time in January 2017, Season 8 renewal was put on indefinite hold, due to a disagreement between HBO and the showrunners over the number of episodes it would contain. While originally Benioff and Weiss stated they intended 7 episodes for Season 7 and 6 for Season 8, apparently there was some internal pushback that they should make more than six episodes (whether for story reasons or purely business/budget reasons is unclear). At their SXSW panel on March 12, 2017, Benioff and Weiss announced that Season 8 will consist of the originally planned six episodes. No new writers will be introduced: Dave Hill will write the first episode, Bryan Cogman the second episode, then Benioff and Weiss will divide up the remaining four. George R.R. Martin will not be returning to script another episode

Cast
Note: All cast members whose characters survive the events of Season 7 are expected to return for Season 8.

Confirmed returning starring cast Confirmed returning guest starring cast
 * Liam Cunningham as Ser Davos Seaworth
 * Sophie Turner as Princess Sansa Stark
 * Mark Gatiss as Tycho Nestoris

Writers

 * Dave Hill: episode 1 (To be confirmed)
 * Bryan Cogman: episode 2 (To be confirmed)
 * David Benioff & D.B. Weiss: episodes 3, 4, 5 and 6 (To be confirmed)