‘Game of Thrones’ Season 7 By The Numbers: The Kill Count And Why It’s The Biggest Season Yet

Winter is coming and Game of Thrones Season 7 spoilers are piling up. Given the show’s nature, nothing is ever certain. However, there’s one thing everyone is absolutely sure about Game of Thrones Season 7: it’s going to be the biggest season yet. The numbers are here to prove it.

Seven

Game of Thrones Season 7 will only have seven episodes. Showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss confirmed in an interview with Variety that they have reduced the number of episodes in the final two seasons of the Emmy-winning show.

Seasons 7 and 8 will have 13 episodes altogether, with Game of Thrones Season 8 wrapping things up with only six episodes. This is much shorter compared to the past seasons which ran on a full 10-episode order.

Abbreviating the final season, however, may be a good thing for the show. Benioff and Weiss have set the highest standards for the fans, the show and for themselves. Given the massive scale at which Game of Thrones is heading story-wise, the duo said they can’t produce 10 episodes within the usual 12 to 14-month time frame.

“It’s crossing out of a television schedule into more of a mid-range movie schedule,” Weiss explained. Indeed so, Game of Thrones Season 7 may be down to fewer episodes, but the show has compensated that by giving fans a cinematic movie-length season-ender.

81

The Game of Thrones Season 7 finale will clock in at 81 minutes, making it the longest episode the show has ever done so far. The record was previously held by Season 6’s “Battle of the Bastards,” which had a 60-minute runtime.

Most of the episodes in the penultimate GOT season will have longer runtimes than usual. HBO recently revealed that Episode 3 will have 63 minutes, while Episode 7 will have 71 minutes.

There has been a lot of talk that the upcoming seasons will be more “cinematic” than their predecessors, thus the length of the finale makes more sense. It is anticipated that these two episodes will have colossal battle sequences that will eclipse that in “Battle of the Bastards.”

“Last season’s battle was ridiculous, but this season, there’s another battle that’s epic,” actress Emilia Clarke told TVLine. She added that however big Season 6 was, “they topped it” in Season 7.

20

Game of Thrones Season 7 claims to have the record for the most stuntmen set on fire. In one sequence, the show simultaneously set aflame 20 stuntmen while using 73 fire burns.

“In one battle scene we set more stuntmen on fire than have ever been simultaneously set on fire,” Benioff told Entertainment Weekly. “Our stunt coordinator really wanted to get in the Guinness Book of World Records for this.”

Rowley Irlam, the stunt coordinator for Game of Thrones, is confident that they have set the bar high. “No film or TV show has ever done that in a whole show, let alone in one sequence,” Irlam explained.

One

From mere football-sized eggs, Daenerys’ three dragon children will be fully grown when fans see them again in the seventh season. In an interview with Entertainment Weekly, director Matt Shakman teased the dragons will be as big as a Boeing 747.

To visualize it, a Boeing 747 is 230-feet long and has a 210-feet wingspan.

Drogon will be the biggest of the bunch, and his flame will be “30-feet in diameter.” With that much firepower, it’s no wonder the show needed to burn that many stuntmen on set!

500,000

With a show as massive as Game of Thrones nothing ever comes cheap, even the per-episode payout for the actors. Main cast members Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Emilia Clarke, Lena Headey, and Nikolaj Coster-Waldau are reportedly receiving huge sums for their appearance on the seventh, and possibly the eighth, season.

According to The Hollywood Reporter, each of them will earn $500,000 per episode in Season 7, making them the highest-earning actors on cable TV.

Deaths: more than you want to count

Although the abovementioned have already been locked in for both seasons, it doesn’t necessarily guarantee their survival on Season 7. Actress Sophie Turner hinted at this in an interview with Variety.

“It’s quite sad. It really feels like things are wrapping up and coming to an end,” Turner said about filming Season 7. “People are hanging around Belfast a bit longer to be around each other and be in each other’s presence.”

When asked about what’s to come in Season 8, Turner left a spoiler-inducing cryptic message.

“We’ve got one more season…well, not all of us.”

Game of Thrones Season 7 will premiere on July 16 on HBO.

[Featured Image by HBO]