'Game of Thrones' showrunners address those spinoff rumors

Game of Thrones is set to end with Season 8 -- and showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss have now confirmed that the final season will only be six episodes long -- which means that if we want to spend more time in Westeros after the show wraps up, we'd better hope that HBO greenlights some kind of spinoff, prequel or sequel series.

The good news: HBO has officially tapped four writers to develop potential Game of Thrones spinoff ideas. The bad news: Benioff and Weiss don't plan on writing them (although they will executive produce).

During the duo's panel at South By Southwest -- moderated by Maisie Williams (Arya Stark) and Sophie Turner (Sansa Stark) -- the showrunners speculated about the future of the franchise.

"We all had dinner last night and we were saying that we should all go do different things. There's always gonna be an urge – you’ll both be dead," Benioff quipped to Williams and Turner, "but for the characters that maybe will survive, there’ll be this temptation to keep doing it and do the spinoff show or the sequel show."

He added, "I think HBO might well do one, and I'm looking forward to watching it. I think it’ll be great, but I think it's better for them to get new blood in with new visions."

"The zombie Stark sisters?" Weiss suggested, much to Williams and Turner's disapproval. "It’s a check!"

HBO boss Casey Bloys recently told reporters that the network was mulling the possibility of some kind of offshoot: "It’s such a big property we would be foolish not to explore it, but it’s a pretty high bar. We’ll take some shots at it. I’m not going to do it just to do it. It has to feel very special. I would rather have no sequel and leave it as-is than have something we rushed out.”

In the meantime, we now know that we have 13 episodes left before Game of Thrones leaves our screens forever, beginning with Season 7, which will premiere on July 16.