Nikolaj Coster-Waldau reveals when Game of Thrones season 8 starts filming

As season 7 of Game of Thrones nears its conclusion, fans are wondering about season 8. Details about the premiere date have remained sketchy, but thanks to Nikolaj Coster-Waldau (Jaime Lannister), we now have an idea of when shooting will start.

Coster-Waldau made his comments when talking to Collider:

"I knew what was going to happen for the first three seasons. After that, it’s been a season at a time. You get the scripts a month before we start shooting, or six weeks, and then you know what’s going to happen that season. But, I don’t know what’s going to happen next season. We go back in October, so maybe in the next few weeks, we’ll get the scripts and I’ll find out. I’m very curious."

There you have it, folks: filming for Game of Thrones season 8 will be underway by October. It’s still unclear what that means for the season 8 premiere date. As Collider notes, Season 7 took roughly six month to film, starting at the end of August 2016 and ending in February of 2017. Six months later, season 7 premiered. If HBO sticks to the same basic schedule, we could expect season 8 to land in the fall of 2018.

Of course, HBO doesn’t have to stick to the same schedule — there have been rumblings that season 8 could not air until 2019. There’s a lot we don’t know, but knowing when filming starts is a first step.

Coster-Waldau has been making the rounds of late, mainly to promote his new movie Shot Caller. Speaking with The Daily Beast, he commented on the recent HBO hacks:

"A couple of weeks ago, I get a call from one of the HBO execs and they go, ‘Hey! How are you?’ and at first I was thinking, ‘Oh, I’m being killed off [Thrones]! I’m not going to make it to Season 8,. But then they go, ‘You know, we just want to inform you that we had a hack. It’s kind of a big problem with HBO. We don’t know quite how bad it is, but it looks like all of your guys’ info has been leaked.’ And I went, What? And they said, ‘Oh, your emails, your phone numbers, all of the info is out there.’ I said, ‘That’s not good! What are we gonna do?’ And they go, ‘Well, we don’t know.’"

Coster-Waldau also said that cast members are still waiting to hear back from HBO regarding the need to change any of their personal information, such as credit card numbers or phone numbers. “They told us they were gonna call us and let us know what to do, and they haven’t. So I guess they’re still trying to figure it out.”

Hopefully the situation gets resolved soon.

Next: Check out over a dozen new photos from “Beyond the Wall”

If you want more Coster-Waldau, he also stopped by BUILD and recorded a 40-minute interview about his work — he starts talking about Game of Thrones at about the 17-minute mark.

He also had a lengthy conversation with Larry King on Larry King Now. The Game of Thrones stuff starts earlier this time.

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