Bad news for Game of Thrones fans as the final season might be delayed

Published 14:20 26 Aug 2018 BST

Dave Hanratty

Bad news for Game of Thrones fans as the final season might be delayed

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Winter is still coming, just maybe a little later...

Game of Thrones fans have had to learn the virtue of patience as the long wait for season eight goes on, and now it seems like the final chapters are further away than once thought. A new report contends that the final season of HBO's bloodthirsty epic may not arrive as expected in April 2019, after all. A key member of the Thrones production team has poured the ice-cold water on fan hopes in an interview with the Huffington Post. Visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer was in conversation about his team's Emmy Awards potential, and let it slip that they won't be in awards contention for another two years. Doing the maths and focusing on the 2020 Emmys, that would indicate that Game of Thrones wouldn't make the deadline to compete for the 2019 awards, which kicks in on 31 May. With only six episodes confirmed for season eight, it would appear that the majority of said episodes wouldn't air before the end of May, thus the potential delay. “In two years we’ll be eligible for the season eight work,” Bauer said, “which we’re just beginning now.”

“We’re going to be toiling away on season eight until May of 2019, so it’s eight or nine months away,” he added. “But the prequel is starting to shoot in February, at least the pilot. So we’ll still have quite a lot to do on season eight when they’re beginning.” The Huffington Post story goes on to point out that though the Emmy Awards deadline for nominations is a tricky enough beast, exceptions have been made before. They speculate a more likely premiere date of June or July, and visual effects work is a fairly essential post-production process, but HBO hold all of the cards at this point. Until they announce an official premiere date, you can add Bauer to the chorus of those who have said that the forthcoming ending is brilliant and shocking and a whole lot more besides.

“I thought it was really brave,” he said. "It’s very true to what Thrones is, and knowing how it ends, I don’t actually see how it could end any other way. I think the whole series has aimed toward this. I obviously can’t say what it is.

"I think there will be divisions because people have grown to identify and like and hate various characters, so everybody has their version of how they want it to end based on those things, but looking at it objectively, I think the way it ends is the way it must end."

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