'Game of Thrones' Episode Guide: HBO Planned to Make Only Seven Seasons of GOT

Nobody was expecting "Game of Thrones" to catapult to success the way that it did, not even television network HBO, which only planned to have the series run until its seventh season.

 "Seven seasons and out was never the case," Michael Lombardo, president of HBO Programming said during the TCA, according to Deadline. "The question is how much beyond (seven seasons) it will go."

Lombardo added that showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have visions to carry the show until its eighth season, so that is what they are currently aiming for.

"David and Dan are feeling there are two more years after Season 6, that's what we're looking at right now. We hope that they would change their mind, but for that's how they are feeling now."

The HBO president has also expressed willingness to continue the series even in a different way if season 8 is only as long as they would go. "We would be open to anything Benioff and Weiss want to do, there is enormous amount of storytelling in that world," Lombardo said. But at that point, "the focus is on figuring out the next season."

When asked about the show's violence and controversial episodes, Lombardo said that they have been very careful dealing with sensitive topics such as rape. "This show had violence as part of its many threads from Episode 1," he said, adding that "there are no two showrunners who are more careful not to overstep the line than Benioff and Weiss."

As for the true fate of Kit Harrington's character Jon Snow, whom many fans are still insisting is still alive in some way, Lombardo told them not to hold out hope lest they be disappointed or heartbroken in the end. "Dead is dead as dead as dead. He be dead. Yes. Everything I've seen, heard, read, Jon Snow is indeed dead," he stressed.

For his part, George R. R. Martin, the brains behind "Game of Thrones" and author of the "A Song of Ice and Fire" series said that 10 seasons of "Game of Thrones" sounds really good to him.

"I also know that HBO wants the series to run longer than that," he wrote in his blog. "I have known that since the very beginning. Well, actually, since the day after the second episode of season one aired, when I had lunch with one of HBO's top execs, who told me, 'We want this to run ten years.' I allowed that ten years sounded fine to me. I continue to hear similar sentiments from HBO every time I have meeting with them, be it in L.A. or New York."