'Game of Thrones' Season 8 has been written, but we still don't know when it'll air

We're all freaking out about the impending end of Game of Thrones, but HBO programming president Casey Bloys doesn't plan to rush any of the proposed spinoffs to air to fill the void.

At the Television Critics Association summer press tour on Wednesday, Bloys revealed that HBO plans to leave "at least a year" between the end of Game of Thrones and the launch of any new companion show.

"The number one priority in all of this is the final season of Game of Thrones, I don’t wanna do anything with a spinoff or anything that detracts or distracts from that," Bloys told reporters after his executive session. "So that season will happen, and my guess is it would be at least a year before you see anything else. Because what I don’t want is the attention to be drawn from the final season, which I think is gonna be epic and amazing, and somehow have the distraction of a new Game of Thrones airing right after it. I think it’s best to separate them and that’s what we’ll do."

Bloys confirmed that Season 8 has been fully written and will consist of six episodes, with showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss currently in the process of "boarding it all out... It’s a big season, so they’re trying to get a sense of how long it’ll take them to shoot this."

Because that work is ongoing, Bloys couldn't confirm whether the final season of Game of Thrones would air in 2018 or be pushed back to 2019, since it will depend on the filming schedule and what's needed for post-production.

Bloys also couldn't confirm the episode length for the final six episodes, since filming on Season 8 hasn't started yet. "They’ve talked about the length; I imagine they’ll be longer but I truly don’t know like, ‘oh they’ll be 80 minutes each,’ or whatever, I’m not sure," he said.

When asked if HBO would institute a "cap" on the episode length for Season 8 or if he'd allow installments to be two hours in length if necessary, Bloys didn't seem inclined to rule anything out saying, "We haven’t had that discussion yet because I don't know how long the episodes are gonna be. Two hours per episode seems like it would be excessive, but it’s a great show, so who knows?"

Bloys also denied reports that there are five spinoffs in development -- HBO only officially announced four companion shows, while author George R. R. Martin mentioned the possibility of a fifth -- and said he hasn't read finished scripts, but noted that they'd be "lucky" to have more than one make it to air.

"We didn’t announce the fifth, don’t try to trick me," he laughed. "There’s four still in development, I haven’t seen anything yet, and as I’ve said, with a show like Game of Thrones, with the level of quality they’ve set, I think we’ll be lucky to have one that hits, but we’re hopeful and we’ll see."

One thing we do know? None of the spinoffs will feature characters who are already on Game of Thrones, Bloys confirmed.

Game of Thrones Season 7 is currently airing Sundays at 9 p.m. on HBO.