Report: Game of Thrones Spent 55 Days (!) Shooting One Season 8 Battle

Kinda makes Blackwater look quaint in comparison, doesn’t it?

#GameofThrones recently wrapped a 55-day, three-location shoot that will bring a huge battle to life in Season 8, according to an Instagram post from one of the series’ assistant directors.

This is for the Night Dragons,” the HBO fantasy drama’s producers wrote in a thank-you note to those involved in the epic undertaking. “For enduring 55 straight nights. For enduring the cold, the snow, the rain, the mud, the sheep s–t of #Toome and the winds of #Magheramorne.” (A photo of the note, posted to and later deleted from Assistant Director Jonathan #Quinlan’s account, can be found at the eagle-eyed Watchers on the Wall site.)

Toome and Maghermorne Quarry are two locations in Northern Ireland where the series has been shooting its eighth and final season. The note gives kudos to the behind-the-scenes folks who labored in the cold to create the spectacle, saying that viewers may not realize how much work had gone into the finished product, but “they’ll just understand that they’re watching something that’s never been done before.”

In #Quinlan’s caption under the note, he added that filming had gone on for 55 consecutive nights in three locales. (The final spot remains a mystery.) In comparison, Season 6’s Battle of the Bastards and Season 7’s Loot Train sequences each took about a month to shoot.