First, the good news: Yes, Game Of Thrones will be coming back in 2019. The bad news? All six episodes will be directed and written by men. According to HBO, David Benioff and D.B. Weiss, David Nutter, and Miguel Sapochnik will take their turns as directors of the final episodes, with Benioff and Weiss, Bryan Cogman, and Dave Hill as writers.
This is, unfortunately, not a surprise. Last summer, Vanity Fair pointed out that only four episodes in total have been written by women (one by Jane Espenson, three by Vanessa Taylor). The rest of season 7 did nothing to improve those numbers.
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As far as directing is concerned, IndieWire confirms things are even worse. Only one out of the 19 Game Of Thrones directors is a woman, Michelle MacLaren, and she's only directed four episodes.
Not only is this disappointing diversity consistent with Game Of Thrones, it's consistent with Hollywood in general. Despite the "reckoning" happening in the industry these past few months, a new study found that 2017 showed no progress in terms of women working on the top 1,100 movies since 2007. In fact, they make up just 4%.
It is so frustrating to have the push for hiring more women be so loud, and yet, time and time again, see shows not actually make the effort. As Women And Hollywood founder Melissa Silverstein put it on Twitter, the #MeToo movement "will be for naught" unless companies make "commitments across the industry to hire women, particularly women of color."
"Every institution across the board must make a public commitment to increasing women and we must hold them to it," she added. "Everyone should be raging. Our cultural stories are being hijacked."
For a show like Game of Thrones that highlights powerful women, this is certainly a disappointing end.
Refinery29 has reached out to HBO for comment.