Game of Thrones season 7 will be a lot shorter than normal

No-one was surprised when HBO announced its season seven renewalof Game of Thrones. It's kind of a no-brainer. The show's a ratings dream that every week turns social media in a hotbed of both excitement and outrage; but it can't last forever, right? Don't worry, there's more Thrones to come, a whole two seasons more in fact. They'll just have less screen time to wrap up all those dangling plot threads.

One of the show's creators David Benioff recently said as much when he told Variety the plan for seasons 7 and 8 was to greatly reduce their episode count. After season 6 concludes, he said there's only 13 episodes remaining in the whole series. Typically, a season of Thrones runs 10 episodes long. HBO was quick to refute this, saying it's early days, however one of the show's directors Jack Bender has now confirmed the news.

When asked by Vanity Fair if he would return to helm another episode next season, here's what he said: "I don’t know the answer to that. They’re only doing seven [episodes], and they’ve got their regulars who have done it forever. I know that I had a wonderful experience doing the show and I know that Dan and David are thrilled with the shows."

There you have it. Whoever it is that shall eventually take command of the Seven Kingdoms and plonk themselves into the Iron Thrones has only... 17 episodes to do it. No wonder season 6 has been moving along so quickly.

Season 6 of Game of Thrones airs Sundays on HBO in the US, and Sky Atlantic on Mondays in the UK.

Images: HBO

Gem Seddon is GamesRadar+'s west coast Entertainment News Reporter, working to keep all of you updated on all of the latest and greatest movies and shows on streaming platforms like Netflix and Amazon Prime. Outside of entertainment journalism, Gem can frequently be found writing about the alternative health and wellness industry, and obsessing over all things Aliens and Terminator on Twitter.