Are you ready for the final season of HBO’s Game of Thrones? Well, it’s finally wrapping up and the runtime of each episode have been leaked recently, and it looks like a movie anthology than a TV series.
In a recent meeting among a group of TV networks in France, slideshows of the rough runtime for each of the six episodes of Season 8 were shown and elaborated further by the spokesperson. This was reported in French magazine Premiere:
Précision utile : @OCSTV a expliqué oralement que les deux premiers épisodes de la saison finale de #GameOfThrones allaient durer 60 minutes, et les quatre suivants 80 mn d'après les dernières infos de HBO https://t.co/UIDwB7xtvU
— Première (@PremiereFR) January 22, 2019
To translate, the spokesperson for TV network OCS explained that the first two episodes will run for roughly 60 minutes, while the final four will have an average of 80 minutes’ runtime. Of course, because this was in a meeting between TV networks and not the official distributor itself, HBO, don’t get too hung up over these numbers.
Needless to say, these numbers are comparable to what we saw in Season 7.
To jog your memory a bit, Season 7’s seven episodes (in sequence) ran for 59, 59, 63, 50, 59, 71, and 81 minutes respectively. It’s also pertinent to note that the HBO drama format typically goes for about 60 minutes or less. If they’re for over an hour, and the producers will have to seek permission from the network to have those episodes greenlit. Another series that has such enormous runtimes would be BBC’s Sherlock, which has been generally successful in the past few years.
In that sense, the last four episodes’ gargantuan (for a TV series) 80-minute average will have special air time, meaning that other shows that normally air at the same time will have to be pushed back or postponed. Not that it matters for the long-running series that will end by May 19, once its final episode airs.
To sum up, the final season of Game of Thrones will be akin to “watching a movie”, expressed by HBO CEO Richard Plepler, as told by Variety.
Game of Thrones Season 8 will premiere on April 15.
Marion has a serious RPG addiction. Sometimes it bleeds into real life; he forgets to sleep because he thinks he has a Witcher’s body clock. Forgive him in advance if he suddenly blurts out terms such as “Mind Flayer” and “Magic Missile”, because never once does he stop thinking about his next Dungeons & Dragons game.
Natalie
