Casey Bloys reveals at the TCA that the showrunners of the hit series are 'perfectionists' and 2019 is 'the soonest it can come back at a level of quality that they are comfortable with.'
- Jan 12, 2018
AceShowbiz - The eighth and final season of "Game of Thrones" has been confirmed to arrive in 2019. While fans are understandably upset over the news, HBO's top programming boss explains why fans have to wait that long for the highly-anticipated new season to come.
"Here's what I'll tell you: They take the time they need to do the show at its highest level of quality. As the show has gone on, it's gotten bigger -- big battle scenes, big special effects," Casey Bloys said at the Television Critics Association press tour in Pasadena, California. "It's a big show. As time has gone on there are bigger battle scenes and more dragons. It's a complicated production. It's simply a matter of them taking the time they need to execute at the level they feel the fans deserve."
He went on saying, "These things take time. Here's the one thing I can assure you: [showrunners] Dan [Dan Weiss] and Dave [David Benioff] were not sitting around on a beach waiting to go back to work. They're perfectionists and this is the soonest it can come back at a level of quality that they are comfortable with."
The final season of the hit medieval series starring Kit Harington and Emilia Clarke indeed is expected to feature a lot of battle scenes, including a dragon-on-dragon battle between Drogon and his undead brother Viserion in the Great War to Come. The battle scenes will also be costly as there will be the army of the undead, the Dothrakis and more marching soldiers in the war.
Bloys also talked about the upcoming five "Game of Thrones" prequels, which are currently in development on the network. "They're moving along," he revealed. "We ave some really talented writers working on them."
However, Bloys revealed that fans wouldn't be getting a backdoor pilot or sort, adding that the spin-off would air "a least a year after 'Game of Thrones' airs." He continued, "We're not using the final season to launch a new show or anything like that. There's going to be a separation between the two. These are among the best writers working and I'm hopeful."
