In a move that will excite many but surprise few, HBO have announced that their flagship series Game of Thrones has officially been renewed for two more seasons. The announcement comes on the heels of the hugely successful fourth season premiere this week. The episode gave Game of Thrones its highest-ever ratings (6.6 million), and HBO’s highest rated episode of any show since the finale of The Sopranos in 2007 (11.9 million).
As it stands, show-runners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss are part-way through the third book in George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire series. It can be assumed that the fourth and fifth books will each require more than one season to properly adapt for the screen, so we can expect the show to run for longer than six seasons when all is said and done. Given Martin’s notoriously slow writing pace, the show is likely to catch up to the books before the seventh and final book is released. But the show is certainly in great hands and Benioff and Weiss will have to cross that bridge when they come to it. But for now, Game of Thrones will continue to be the most critically and commercially popular television series in the world for at least two more years.
Game of Thrones airs on Mondays on Showcase.
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