'Game of Thrones' season 7 news: HBO confirms eighth season to be the last

It's official: "Game of Thrones" will conclude with its eighth season which will likely debut in 2018.

HBO confirmed the end of its hit fantasy drama series during its presentation at the Television Critics Association's (TCA) summer press tour last week. Casey Bloys, the network's new programming president, made the announcement, saying that "Game of Thrones" showrunners David Benioff and D.B. Weiss had a "very specific plan" about the number of seasons that they wanted to do for the award-winning series.

"If I could get them to do more, I would take 10 seasons," Bloys said as quoted by The Hollywood Reporter. "but we want to take their lead with what they could do and what the best version of the show is," he added

While the series finale seems far away given that the show's seventh season has yet to start, the end is actually almost at hand. It was previously announced that the upcoming season will only have seven episodes, three less than there were in the show's first six seasons.

Benioff and Weiss have previously said that they intend on doing between 10 and 15 more episodes of "Game of Thrones" following the previous season's finale.

During HBO's TCA presentation, Bloys also spoke about a possible "Game of Thrones" spinoff, confirming that it is something that the network has considered.

"It's not something I'm opposed to, but it has to make sense creatively," he said. "I'm not sure the guys can wrap their heads around it when they are about to start production. We're open to it — the guys aren't opposed to it, but there's no concrete plans right now."

Meanwhile, Variety reports that Universal Cable Productions is developing a series based on "Wild Cards," a series of novels edited by "Game of Thrones" author George R.R. Martin and Melinda Snodgrass.

The TV adaptation of "Wild Cards" is set to become another epic fantasy series based on the 22 books that were written by 31 science fiction writers under the Wild Cards Trust which is spearheaded by Martin and Snodgrass.

But while Martin edited the first 17 books in the series, the "Game of Thrones" creator, who is locked into a development agreement with HBO, will not be executive producing the "Wild Cards" adaptation.

The penultimate season of "Game of Thrones" is set to premiere sometime in 2017.