The seventh season of HBO’s fantasy drama TV series Game of Thrones (GOT) will premiere later than usual, in mid-2017. But fans are already buzzing thanks to Maisie Williams’ tweets after reading the scripts for the show’s upcoming season.
Williams, the actress who plays the vengeful Arya Stark, posted a series of tweets expressing her first thoughts on the upcoming episodes. She said that things would get real, advising fans to start preparing themselves before concluding there was nothing they could do to get ready for it.
Last week, Sophie Turner, or Sansa Stark in G0T, confirmed she had just received the scripts and started reading them. However, Kit Harington revealed yesterday that he hadn’t read them.
Apparently, the actor is taking too seriously his know-nothing Jon Snow character. Harington could be lying, though, like the time he lied about his character being indeed dead before the start of season sixth.
Two seasons left for GoT’s finale
The seventh season of Game of Thrones was ordered by HBO back in April, just days before the premiere of the show’s sixth season. Unlike previous seasons, it will probably premiere in June 2017 instead of April, and will have seven episodes instead of the usual ten episodes.
It will primarily consist of original content currently not found in George R. R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series as was the case with the latest season. But it will also adapt material from the upcoming sixth and seventh novels The Winds of Winter and A Dream of Spring.
Martin met with HBO representatives in June and, according to reports, he revealed to them some material from his novels, which could appear in the new season.
Winter is coming, literally
Series creators and executive producers David Benioff and D. B. Weiss will serve as showrunners for the seventh season. The directors for the seventh season are Alan Taylor, Jeremy Podeswa, Mark Mylod and Matt Shakman.
Filming will begin in late August and end in February 2017. The showrunners announced that shooting began later than expected because they wanted weather conditions to fit the show’s storyline. In GOT winter is coming, so they needed real winter to get grim and gray weather even in the sunnier filming places.
Shooting locations for the seventh season will include Northern Ireland, Spain, and Iceland. Filming in Northern Ireland will begin this month, while Iceland will serve for scenes behind the Wall. The series will film in several Spanish cities like Seville, Cáceres, Almodovar del Rio, Santiponce, Zumaia, and Bermeo.
Main cast members from Game of Thrones get quite a substantial pay rise
In regards to the actors, reports say that the five main cast members, Peter Dinklage (Tyrion Lannister), Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), Lena Headey (Cersei Lannister), Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen) and Kit Harington (Jon Snow) have renegotiated their contracts for the final two seasons. Supposedly, they will now perceive $500,000 per episode.
Last month, HBO released a teaser production trailer for its flagship series at the 2016 San Diego Comic-Con. It mostly contained voiceovers and shots of the crew creating the sets.
Based on the A Song of Ice and Fire novels and set in the fictional Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, Game of Thrones chronicles the dynastic battles among the realm’s noble families for the Iron Throne, while additional threats emerge behind the Wall located in the icy North.
Source: Entertainment Weekly