'Game of Thrones' season 7 news: Star Iain Glen explains long wait for HBO series' new season

The production of "Game of Thrones" season 7 is taking just as long as the previous seasons despite having fewer episodes compared to other installments.

Although the show's upcoming seventh season has been cut back to seven episodes instead of the usual 10, showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff have announced that the series will air a bit later than the previous seasons. Since the delay was initially attributed to the idea that production was pushed back to accommodate for the arrival of winter in the story, it seemed that three less episodes would let them make up for the lost time.

"Game of Thrones" cast member Iain Glen, who plays Ser Jorah Mormont, recently caught up with Radio Times, and he revealed why an earlier release date is not possible for the HBO drama. "They are taking the length of time it takes to shoot 10 episodes to shoot just seven this year and six next year," Glen said. "There are 15 more hours left in Thrones as we understand it, but that may change, but that's as far as we know," the actor went on to say.

Glen went on to say that the construction of complex set pieces also plays a huge part on the show's release date. "I think the scale and size of the set pieces, the world that is being created it's just getting more and more extraordinary and they feel they need that time to shoot seven hours as opposed to 10," he added.

Since the show became a worldwide hit after its 2011 debut, fans have been suggesting that "Game of Thrones" should make more than 10 episodes. As noted by Entertainment Weekly, Weiss and Benioff have previously explained that making the show is laborious because they have to shoot in various countries and make cinematic scenes that require post-production visual effects. It takes an entire year to complete every season, so the series has stuck to its usual number of 10 episodes, or less, per season.

The seventh season of "Game of Thrones" premieres in April 2017 on HBO.