Despite fewer episodes, Game of Thrones Season 7 taking as long to shoot as past seasons

We’ve got two more seasons of Game of Thrones left: a seventh season of seven episodes and an eighth season of six episodes, for a total of 13 episodes remaining. Every previous season consisted of 10 episodes, so unfortunately, the final two years of the show will be shorter than usual.

Or will they? Iain Glen (Jorah Mormont) recently addressed the question with the Radio Times:

"[The Game of Thrones producers] are taking the length of time it takes to shoot ten episodes to shoot just seven this year and six next year. There are fifteen more hours left in Thrones as we understand it, but that may change, but that’s as far as we know."

We know we’re not getting as many episodes new year. But Glen’s comment makes it sound like we might still get as much content, or at least not considerably less than in the past. That tracks with something Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) said about Season 7 a while back:

"And it’s a shorter series. We only have seven episodes this time. But we’re shooting for just as long, so there’s just as much content."

Does this mean the remaining episodes of Game of Thrones will be longer than usual? After all, Glen mentions “fifteen more hours” of the show. If there are only 13 more episodes, at least some of them would have to be super-sized to hit that mark.

Of course, he could just be guesstimating. Still, he and Williams are right that the production is spending just as much time on the new season as it did on the previous ones. (Shooting on Season 7 wraps in mid-February.) Hmm…

Glen also teased Season 7 more generally, promising lots of exciting things to come:

"I think the scale and size of the set pieces, the world that is being created it’s just getting more and more extraordinary and they feel they need that time to shoot seven hours as opposed to ten."

So perhaps the lengthy amount of time spent filming Season 7 is going into making the set pieces look as spectacular as possible.

Also on the horizon: more characters meeting up, a trend that started in Season 5, intensified in Season 6 and looks like it will continue to plow full steam ahead in Season 7.

"This season you feel that the drama is moving towards its end game, more characters are overlapping so we are seeing a lot more of each other, than perhaps in the past. In the same scenes and we are going to the same places."

I think this comment plays into the notion of fewer episodes. Remember that, back in Season 1, the show only had a few plotlines to follow. Over the next several years, the number of active storylines ballooned, but in Season 7, everything is contracting. Some fans may be justly worried that, with fewer episodes, the producers won’t be able to tell as complete a story. But I would urge them to remember that, because so many of the characters are coming together and striving to achieve common goals, there are fewer storylines to cover. In theory, at least, this means the show can do more with less.

And what of death? Does Jorah make it the end of this bloody story?

"I don’t know of course if I am going to make the last one. I am sort of doing a head count, but I think it’s certainly under ten people who were in the original pilot and have been in every season since. I have grown very attached to it. I love the people involved. Dan and David are very benign showrunners and very good people."

Game of Thrones Season 7 premieres in the summer of 2017. We’ll be ready.