HBO will confirm few details of the eighth and final Game of Thrones season; perhaps least of all whether we’ll wait until 2019 to see it. That said, star Liam Cunningham may have guaranteed the fantasy blockbuster will sit out 2018 with an update on production.

Keep in mind that both Nikolaj Coster-Waldau and Iain Glen have suggested production will get underway in the next few weeks – at least leaving a vague possibility Season 8 could arrive in late 2018 – but Cunningham seemingly dropped the final axe in conversation with TVGuide. The once and future Davos Seaworth mentioned that production would take until at least summer 2018, to which Entertainment Weekly adds that post-production would almost certainly place the premiere in 2019.

[The episodes are] definitely going to be bigger and what I hear is longer. 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.

Longer episodes” will at least offer comfort to fans, just as the seven Season 7 episodes approximated other years with overall runtime. Other stars like John Bradley have claimed that each of the final six will match the usual “Episode 9” quality, while Iain Glen most recently suggested production time owed to the consolidation of film units.

EW also suggested that 2018 will see HBO concentrating on Westworld Season 2 in early months, and a Thrones Season 7 Emmy push for the fall, so might Game of Thrones’ final hours be locked for 2019?

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