After several Season 7 episodes leaked online earlier this year, Game of Thrones is taking some extraordinary steps to ensure the series finale is a surprise.
HBO executives say the show will shoot multiple endings to spoiler-proof the show, ensuring that even if members of the production team spill the beans, they may not have accurate information.
“I know in Game of Thrones, the ending, they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that nobody really know what happens,” HBO programming president Casey Bloys reportedly told students at Moravian College. “You have to do that on a long show. Because when you’re shooting something, people know. So they’re going to shoot multiple versions so that there’s no real definitive answer until the end.”
Production on the final six episodes of the wildly popular show is scheduled to begin in October, according to The Hollywood Reporter. It’s entirely possible the show won’t return to the air until 2019.
A lot is riding on that final season. Game of Thrones has been a ratings monster for HBO. 12.1 million viewers watched the Season 7 finale and 30.8 million watched the seventh season. That popularity has a downside, though. The seventh season was also pirated more than 1 billion times.