'Game Of Thrones' Spoilers: HBO Series Will End After 7 Seasons, Says Showrunners Weiss And Benioff

“Game of Thrones” Season 4 premieres on HBO on April 6, but before reveling in the excitement of the all new season, fans should take a moment to notice that this forthcoming season marks the half way point of the series, which to be honest is difficult to conceptualize. “Game of Thrones” notable show runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss recently confirmed the rumor that their hugely popular show inspired by George R.R. Martin’s “A Song of Ice and Fire” series will be coming to a close after seven seasons. “It feels like this is the midpoint for us,” Benioff says. “If we’re going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, season 4 is right down the middle, the pivot point.”

We have heard that the series will run for seven seasons before, however it has never been officially confirmed. But now Benioff and Weiss are both in agreement that seven is the perfect number, “I would say it’s the goal we’ve had from the beginning. It was our unstated goal, because to start on a show and say your goal is seven seasons is the height of lunacy. Once we got to the point where we felt like we’re going to be able to tell this tale to its conclusion, that became [an even clearer] goal. Seven gods, seven kingdoms, seven seasons. It feels right to us.”

Even seven feels right to the show runners it seems nearly impossible to project the number of season considering the story of “Game of Thrones” is still uncompleted, Martin has only released five of the seven planned novels. With both “The Winds of Winter” and “A Dream Of Spring” still forthcoming it is unlikely that the show runners even know how to fit all of the details into the final three seasons. Fans have already seen in the promo videos for Season 4, that plot lines from multiple books are colliding, no longer is the show staying strict to what happens in each installment, instead multiple plotlines from varying points in the books are being combined into one season. But with two books still unreleased and two books, “A Feast For Crows” and “A Dance with Dragons” still to cover the timeline seems rushed.

Even HBO programming president Michael Lombardo has suggested the idea of extended the show’s run to eight season, which would most likely be a more practical timeline also when taking in to account Martin’s infamously slow writing style and lack of promptness with projected deadlines. Consider this, the last installment of the “A Song of Ice and Fire” series took Martin a staggering six years to write, now this was most certainly the longest release delay but other time gaps include three years and five years between books. “A Dance of Dragons” was released in July of 2011, so the earliest we could see the next installment is probably July of 2014, this being the best case scenario gives fans the book immediately following the fourth season. Then going off that timeline again, fans will have at least another three years to wait until the final installment of the book series is released, which means that by Benioff and Weiss projection the TV show “Game of Thrones” would have already wrapped it’s seventh and final season.

The loyal fandom of “A Song of Ice and Fire” would literally erupt if the HBO series surpassed the book release, and if the TV show was delayed due to a delayed book release, we are assuming the growing audience members would not be too pleased. The best way to solve this issue is to extend the series to eight seasons. Read what Michael Lombardo had to say about the series, it sounds like he is pushing for an eighth season. “I’m expecting to be sitting down with Dan and David to talk Season 5 and we’ll talk about how things are looking,” says Lombardo. “We’re all very mindful that they’re having conversations all the time with [author George R.R. Martin]. I think they do feel bullish enough that there’s enough story to deliver through Season 7. I hate to sound greedy, but our longest shows have gone seven or eight seasons, so seven is a nice long run for us.”