[BigRedChief]

Actor Iain Glen, who plays Jorah Mormont, confirmed the news to RadioTimes:

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

Filming for a “Game of Thrones” season usually spans multiple countries and takes around five months to complete. By taking the same amount of time for the show’s shorter penultimate season, HBO will have the opportunity to make the final product that much more impressive. Glen even said the series is getting “more extraordinary”:

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.