(Newser) – Sorry, Game of Thrones fans: As feared, the HBO show's seventh season won't be here until summer 2017 (typically, the new season arrives each year in the spring), and it will only be seven episodes long instead of 10. "Now that winter has arrived on Game of Thrones, executive producers David Benioff and DB Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing," the president of HBO programming explains, per Entertainment Weekly. "Instead of the show’s traditional spring debut, we’re moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule."

Benioff and Weiss have previously said the series will be 73 hours long, so if there are seven episodes in season seven, there will likely be six episodes in the show's final, eighth season, though that has not yet been confirmed. (Read more Game of Thrones stories.)

