Fan Fest News

News for Fans, By Fans!

‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8 Episode Lengths Reportedly Released

The night is dark and full of terrors…

Games of Thrones season 8 is coming soon as we can barely contain our excitement. 6 episodes and then it’s all over (until the prequel, of course).

We haven’t had a lot from HBO in terms of trailers, posters, news, and just general information. Everything seems incredibly classified. However, a report from a meeting with TV networks in France may have revealed the alleged runtimes of the final six episodes.

Premiere Magazine shared the report on Twitter:

Now, my french is very limited but the magazine claims that the first 2 episodes of Season 8 are 60 minutes long, while the final 4 are 80 minutes. Even though the report says 90 minutes, this is mostly likely because of ad breaks. Just for context, the longest episode of Game of Thrones was the Season 7 finale which was 81 minutes long.

Take this with a pinch of salt. While they have not been confirmed by HBO, they do provide a rough idea of what to expect. With the report, Season 8 is looking to be over 7 hours long (7 hours and 20 minutes if you use the timings provided by Premiere).

The HBO boss, Richard Pleper, said that the final Season is a spectacle and that the showrunners have essentially made 6 movies:

“The reaction I had while watching them was, ‘I’m watching a movie,’“

So, expect long episodes. The report suggests that the runtime will look like this

60, 60, 80, 80, 80, 80

What is important to note here is that when a HBO drama exceeds an hour long, the producers must get permission since the lengths impact the schedule, not just for HBO, but also for other distributors. However, because Game of Thrones is so popular there might be some leniency which explain why some episodes in Season 7 went way beyond an hour and 4 episodes were just under 1 hour long (episode 1, 2, 4, and 5).

At the moment this is all speculation and unconfirmed news. But it does provide a very good template while we wait for something more concrete.

As a Game of Thrones fan, I’m beyond excited. April 14th can’t come soon enough. Let me know your thoughts on these timings. Which episode do you think features the massive battle that is said to make the Battle of the Bastards look like a theme park? maybe it’s 2 episodes…

*hyperventilates* Seven Hells! imagine that.