Alongside all the drama and intrigue, Game of Thrones is rightfully renowned for its spectacular battle sequences. The recent episode "Battle of the Bastards" featured an epic confrontation to rival the previous ones in "Blackwater" and "The Watchers on the Wall." But it has now been revealed that the makers were forced to cut a battle scene that was originally intended for the very first season.

　　Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss were interviewed by the UFC Unfiltered podcast, and explained that budget restrictions meant they had to cut one of the book's key sequence from the show.

　　"Thinking back to season one, there was supposed to be this big battle," they said, via Digital Spy. "Tyrion Lannister follows The Mountain into combat--and we were really excited. We were going to have the camera at Peter Dinklage's eye level and have him follow this giant, The Mountain, into battle and just see everything.

　　"Frankly we just ran out of money and we couldn't do it. So that was one of the big battles from the book that we hoped we could get on screen and we never managed to do it."

　　Nevertheless, the showrunners admitted that ultimately, keeping the epic battles for later, higher-budgeted seasons was a good thing. "In a way, I think it's probably better that we couldn't do it, because it never would have measured up to what we were able to do later," they said.

　　It has also been reported that the seventh season of the hit fantasy show will arrive later than previous seasons, which have usually premiered in April each year. The makers are looking to use more wintery locations that in the past, meaning pushing the production back.

　　Season 7 is expected to debut in 2017, with an eighth and potentially final season presumably premiering the next year. Benioff and Weiss have talked about how Seasons 7 and 8 may be shorter than the rest, spanning 13 episodes between them; all previous seasons had 10 episodes.