"Game of Thrones" adds first new face for season 7

PanARMENIAN.Net - "Game of Thrones" has just added the first new face for its upcoming seventh season. Academy Award-winning actor Jim Broadbent has signed up to star in the next installment of the hit HBO series. His role is kept under wraps, but it is said to be a "significant" one, AceShowbiz reveals.

Broadbent won an Oscar for his role in 2001's film "Iris". The 67-year-old British actor is also known for his role in "Moulin Rouge!", for which he nabbed a BAFTA Award. His other credits include films "Time Bandits", "Brazil", "Bridget Jones's Diary" and the "Harry Potter" film franchise (as Horace Slughorn) as well as TV movie "Longford" that helped him earn a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination.

Production on season 7 of "Game of Thrones" will begin soon in Northern Island, as some of the stars have recently been spotted around Belfast. The new season will not air until summer 2017, later than its usual spring premiere, and will only consist of seven episodes.

Explaining the delay, Carter Bloys, president of HBO programming, said back in July, "Now that winter has arrived on 'Game of Thrones', executive producers David Benioff and D.B. 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. Instead of the show's traditional spring debut, we're moving the debut to summer to accommodate the shooting schedule."