HBO reveals timetables for Game of Thrones season 8 and the Age of Heroes prequel show

Right now, journalists are gathered at the Television Critics Association press tour, where TV’s biggest names talk about what they have in the pipeline. HBO’s press conference was the first on the docket, and programming president Casey Bloys dropped a few bits of info every Game of Thrones fan will want to hear. Let’s hit the highlights:

The final season of Game of Thrones will air during the first half of 2019.

Not a shocker, this. We’ve known for a while that the final six episodes of the show would drop in 2019. Filming ended not long ago, which gives the production plenty of time to edit and add in special effects, but that process was never going to stretch into the second half of 2019. Our best bet is that season 8 will premiere sometime in March or April.

And how is the final season? “It’s pretty great,” Bloys said.

The Age of Heroes prequel won’t start shooting until 2019.

We’ve also known for a few weeks that HBO is making a prequel series to Game of Thrones. There’s still no name for it, but it will be set during the Age of Heroes, thousands of years before Daenerys Targaryen and Jon Snow and Tyrion Lannister and the like were born. There have been reports that the show could start shooting as early as October of this year, but Bloys shot them down. “I don’t know where that report came from, we’re hoping to go into production in early ’19,” he said. They’re still searching for a director.

So there you go: the successor to Game of Thrones will start shooting the same year as its big brother airs its series finale. There’s no word yet on when that show will premiere.

There have been other prequel rumors in the air. A couple weeks back, it was widely reported that HBO was working on a second show called Empire of Ash, about the fall of the Valyrian empire. If it’s true, Bloys said nothing about it, which you can interpret how you like.

We know that, at one time, HBO was developing five prequel ideas, the Age of Heroes show being the only one for which we know for sure they’re making a pilot. According to journalist Linda Ge, Bloys said the other four are “half dead/half on-hold,” whatever that means.

Bloys had things to say about stuff other than Game of Thrones, too. Some notables:

• Deadwood, HBO’s beloved western series, was cancelled in 2004, and fans have never stopped asking for a follow-up. Now, Bloys confirms that the network is shooting a Deadwood movie in October.
• Remember Confederate, the show from Game of Thrones showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss that imagined what modern life would be like if the Civil War was fought to a standstill and slavery still existed? According to Bloys, there’s been “no change…Nothing has been written.” Apparently everyone involved is “busy.” Considering the massive backlash the show received when it was announced and the fact that Disney has tapped Benioff and Weiss to make Star Wars movies, we doubt Confederate will ever see the light of day.
• Curb Your Enthusiasm will be back whenever star and creator Larry David is ready, which Bloys thinks will be soon.
• Bloys talked about why he greenlit a third season of True Detective after the second polarized the audience: “When I read the scripts I was sure.”
• Bloys throws some understated shade at Amazon: “There’s no next Sopranos, there’s no next Game of Thrones, there’s only the next great show.”
• Bloys said that Westworld “is not for casual viewers…[showrunners] Jonah [Nolan] and Lisa [Joy] like to challenge their viewers’ attention.
• Casey Bloys congratulates Netflix for getting more Emmy nominations than HBO for the first time ever: “It’s a great honor and they earned it…[G]etting four less nominations is not going to change the type of programs we’re producing at all.”

Lots of stuff on the way.

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h/t Entertainment Weekly, Debra Birnbaum‏, Ben Travers‏, Meghan O’Keefe,