'Game of Thrones' season 7 delayed, to arrive in 2017 summer

Los Angeles: Winter is coming to "Game of Thrones" but not until summer 2017.

The season seven of the show has been delayed from its usual April premiere. HBO has announced that they have pushed the production of the season 7 to later this summer to keep up with the storyline.

The seven-episode drama will be based in Northern Ireland with portions filming in Spain and Iceland.

"Now that winter has arrived on 'Game of Thrones', executive producers David Benioff and DB Weiss felt that the storylines of the next season would be better served by starting production a little later than usual, when the weather is changing," Carter Bloys, president of HBO programming, said in a statement.

"Instead of the show's traditional spring debut, we're moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule."

The season 7 directors will include Mark Mylod, Jeremy Podeswa, Matt Shakman and Alan Taylor. Locations for shooting in Spain will include Sevilla, Caceres, Almodovar del Rio, Santiponce, Zumaia and Bermeo.

"Game of Thrones" co-creators Weiss and Benioff made headlines when they admitted that the season would likely be delayed.

"We don't have an air date yet," Benioff and Weiss had recently said.

"We're starting a bit later because at the end of this season, 'Winter is here'?and that means that sunny weather doesn't really serve our purposes any more. So we kind of pushed everything down the line, so we could get some grim, grey weather even in the sunnier places that we shoot."

"Game of Thrones" picked up 23 Emmy nominations for the 2016 awards show. Among the nominees are Peter Dinklage, Kit Harington, Lena Headey, Maisie Williams and Emilia Clarke.

The season 7 be airing on Star World Premiere in India.