Game of Thrones May Have Shorter Final Seasons

Game of Throneswill have at least two more seasons after the upcoming sixth season, but they'll be a lot shorter than you're used to.

Executive producers David Benioff and D.B. Weiss told Variety that they have outlined approximately 13 more episodes following this season. "I think we're down to our final 13 episodes after this season. We're heading into the final lap," Benioff said. "That's the guess, though nothing is yet set in stone, but that's what we're looking at." The previous seasons have all contained 10 episodes.

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Other sources told Variety that 13 is a conservative estimate, considering that Benioff and Weiss have only just started to outline the remainder of the series. It is also not confirmed that Season 8 will be the last, but HBO signaled in January that it was in talks with the showrunners for only two more seasons. "We're still in conversations," said HBO Programming President Michael Lombardo.

The producers told Variety that shorter seasons would allow them to put more time into each episode. The show goes back into production in July for the seventh season. "It's crossing out of a television schedule into more of a mid-range movie schedule," Weiss said.

Game of Thrones premieres April 24 at 9/8c on HBO.