Entertainment Weekly has unveiled 16 brand new covers for their upcoming issue, which will be a celebration of the final season of Game of Thrones. The hit HBO fantasy series concludes its run with an eighth season, due out in April.

The covers provide close looks at the series’ central characters, including Daenerys Targaryen, Jon Snow, siblings Tyrion, Cersei and Jaime Lannister, sisters Sansa and Arya Stark, and several others. Certain characters such as Melsandre and Grey Worm, Lord Varys and Ser Jorah Mormont, Theon and Euron Greyjoy and The Hound and The Mountain have been paired up. The characters seem to be in Kings Landing.

Speaking to EW about the show’s hotly anticipated conclusion, director David Nutter said, “The fans will not be let down. There are a lot of firsts in these episodes. There’s the funniest sequence I’ve ever shot on this show, the most emotional and compelling scene I’ve ever shot, and there’s one scene where there’s so many [major characters] together it feels like you’re watching a superhero movie.”

More details about the show’s super-secret finale episode were also revealed. The report noted that only crew members with special access were allowed on set, while several scenes were shot in a closed environment.

Games of Thrones’ final season will consist of six episodes, reportedly of 90 minutes each. “When something has been sitting with you for so long, you have such a specific sense of the way each moment should play and feel,” co-creator and co-director of the series finale, DB Weiss explained. “Not just in terms of ‘this shot or that shot,’ though sometimes it’s that as well. So it’s not really fair to ask somebody else to get that right. We’d be lurking over their shoulder every take driving them crazy making it hard for them to do their job. If we’re going to drive anybody crazy it might as well be ourselves.”

Asked about the finale, Weiss said, “We’ve spent 11 years doing this. We also know no matter what we do, even if it’s the optimal version, that a certain number of people will hate the best of all possible versions. There is no version where everybody says, ‘I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this’ — that’s an impossible reality that doesn’t exist. I’m hoping for the Breaking Bad [finale] argument where it’s like, ‘Is that an A or an A+?’”

Follow @htshowbiz for more

First Published: Mar 04, 2019 19:17 IST