‘True Blood’ Ending After Season 7

HBO has announced that True Blood will end after its upcoming seventh season.

The vampire drama was renewed in July, but the 10-episode season 7 won’t air until next summer. At the time, HBO programming president Michael Lombardo credited the series’ executive producer and his crew with making the show a hit.

“True Blood remains a signature show for HBO, and a true phenomenon with our viewers,” Lombardo said. “Thanks to [executive producer] Brian Buckner and his talented team, the show continues to be a thrill ride like nothing else on TV.”

Lombardo kept up the praise Tuesday when he announced that the series would be ending after the upcoming season.

“True Blood has been nothing short of a defining show for HBO,” Lombardo said. “Together with its legions of fans, it will be hard to say goodbye to the residents of Bon Temps, but I look forward to what promises to be a fantastic final chapter of this incredible show.”

True Blood is based on Charlaine Harris’ The Southern Vampire Mysteries series of novels. The series premiered on September 7, 2008 and has gone on to win a number of awards, including a Primetime Emmy for Outstanding Casting in a Drama, a GLAAD Media Award for Outstanding Drama Series, a Golden Globe for Best Performance by an Actress In a Television Series (Anna Paquin), and several others.

At Comic-Con in July, Brian Buckner announced that the series would be heading back to Bons Temps, where the show was originally focused, but had moved from in the past few seasons. He also said that he wanted to draw the main characters back together to face a single threat and cut down the number of storylines.

True Blood drew 4.5 million viewers for its sixth season premiere on June 16, and averaged a gross audience of 10.6 million viewers per episode. The series’ original stars, Anna Paquin, Stephen Moyer, and Alexander Skarsgard will all be returning for the final season.