Game of Thrones Season 7 will premiere later than usual

Season 6 just ended, but we’re already getting quite a bit of news about Game of Thrones Season 7. Today, we got a juicy tidbit straight from the mouths of showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss, who appeared on the UFC Unfiltered Podcast with hosts Jim Norton and Matt Serra. Benioff and Weiss come in around the 26-minute mark. You can listen below, and then we’ll hit the highlights.

First of all, it’s charming how excited the hosts are. Second, by far the biggest takeaway from the interview comes around 41:25, when Weiss reveals that Season 7 will start later than past seasons of the show.

"We don’t have an air date yet but this year it’ll probably be a little bit later. We’re starting a bit later because, you know, the end of this season, winter is here, and that means that sunny weather doesn’t really serve our purposes anymore. So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim, gray weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot."

How much later? Well, Weiss gives his soundbite after the host asks if the show is coming back in April. (Five out of the show’s six seasons have premiered in April. Season 3 premiered on the last day of March.) So Game of Thrones Season 7 will premiere later than April.

Weiss’ reasoning is actually cause for celebration, though, or at least cause for rubbing your chin and going “hmmmm.” As Sansa pointed out to Jon in the Season 6 finale, winter has come, and I like that the producers are willing to delay filming a bit so the weather matches what they’re going for.

Other takeaways from the podcast:

• Benioff confirmed that there are two seasons left of the show and that they won’t have as many episodes as usual. He didn’t give specifics, though. “The two seasons will be a bit shorter. We don’t have a definite episode count, but each season will be a little bit shorter, just cause each year it takes longer and longer to shoot.”
• Weiss on George R.R. Martin’s view of the changes he and Benioff made to the author’s books: “Not to say George has agreed with everything we’ve done, but I think, by and large, on the grander scale, he gets what you need to do to adapt something, and he’s a grown-up and a gentleman about it.”
• When conceiving the Battle of the Bastards, Benioff and Weiss wanted a “sense of how random it was.” When arrows are flying through the air, it’s not necessarily “the best and the bravest” who survive, but rather the ones who get lucky. “You could be the greatest fighter in the world, it’s just luck that one of them doesn’t plunk you in the head.” Jon Snow got pretty lucky.
• Benioff and Weiss are open to the idea of Game of Thrones spinoffs, but are too consumed by the process of making the show to spare the time to give it much thought.
• They know how the show is going to end. “We could write the final episode right now.”

And finally, they confirmed what became of Gendry. “He’s still rowin’.”

h/t Digital Spy