‘Game Of Thrones’ Spoilers: Iain Glen Blames ‘Extraordinary’ Script For Season 7 Delay, Teases Season 8 Episodes

“Game of Thrones” fans have been waiting months for the Season 7 premiere and they’ve got many more ahead of them. While this may seem like some cruel and unusual punishment handed down from HBO, star Iain Glen assures fans there’s a good reason it’s taking so long to film.

According to a Radio Times interview with Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont in the original series, “Game of Thrones” creators decided to cut the number of episodes but are spending as much time filming as they would for any other season. He chalked the long production time up to “the scale and size of the set pieces,” revealing that big things are coming in Season 7 — literally.

“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,” Glen said.

Additionally, the Scotland native revealed that decisions have been made about Season 8 — the final season of “Game of Thrones.” Glen told Radio Times the last season of the HBO series will be even shorter than the upcoming one. At present, he and the rest of the cast were told there will be just six episodes in Season 8.

“They are taking the length of time it takes to shoot 10 episodes to shoot just seven this year and six next year. There are 15 more hours left in ‘Thrones’ as we understand it, but that may change, but that’s as far as we know.”

Although “Game of Thrones” is coming to an end, fans should continue to hold out hope for a spinoff series. HBO CEO Richard Plepner recently revealed that there is a good chance of some “brand expansion” in the future. According to The Independent, he assured fans of the series that producers were very much aware of how “exciting” a spinoff would be to viewers, but wanted to focus their attention on the task at hand — finishing “Game of Thrones” strong.

“Right now we’re focused on finishing the series with the kind of energy and excitement that everyone has come to expect,” he said. “We’re going to do that while at the same time parallel processing very embryonic stages of other possibilities.”

This is hardly the first time there’s been buzz about a spinoff from executives at HBO. In November, HBO’s president of programming, Casey Bloys, told Entertainment Weekly that the network had been working closely with George R.R. Martin, the author of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” novels in which the show is based. Bloys revealed that Martin had created thousands of years of fake history about Westeros and the surrounding kingdoms, which HBO hoped would be useful in making another “Game of Thrones” based show.

“I would say it’s still kind of preliminary ongoing talks,” Bloys told EW. “There are areas we are exploring, but I wouldn’t point to any one and say, ‘This is what we’re going to do.’”

Season 7 of “Game of Thrones” is expected to premiere in the latter half of 2017.