With each passing season bringing HBO’s Game Of Thrones ever closer to the end of George R.R. Martin’s published novels—and each passing day bringing news of Martin seemingly doing anything but writing those novels—many have wondered whether the show will be increasingly forced to pad things out to give Martin time to complete his saga. Recently, co-showrunner David Benioff addressed those concerns to Entertainment Weekly, stressing that Game Of Thrones doesn’t want to be “a show that outstays its welcome,” and rebuking the idea of dragging on for 10 seasons—even if it meant using the “broad strokes of Martin’s ending” the author has already provided to conclude the show before the final books are released.


Now producer Frank Doelger has put an even more definite, albeit still-tentative cap on the series: “I would hope that, if we all survive and if the audience stays with us, we'll probably get through to seven seasons,” Doelger said at the recent BAFTA Awards, a number that would match the promised seven books Martin says he will eventually publish… you know, whenever.

As Doelger elaborates, “[The number of series] is being discussed as we speak. The third season was the first half of book three, season four will be the second part of book three. . . George R.R. Martin has written books four and five; six and seven are pending.” And that would mean, if this plan pans out, some of the material from those later books will obviously have to be condensed in order to make it all work. (“Man, you’ll never guess who died and also who went through a complicated power struggle yesterday,” one character might say, before covering the events of an entire novel in one quick monologue over a cup of wine.) Anyway, there’s still time for producers to map all that out, and for people on the Internet to tell them how they should do it. [via Rolling Stone]