HBO has gone to great lengths to keep the secrets of Game of Thrones’ final season under wraps, but with the premiere date approaching, distributors have to know what’s up. Today, Orange Cinéma Séries, a group of French TV channels, held an event showing off some of its upcoming content to press. French entertainment site Premiere was there to live-tweet, and caught some juicy details about the final six episodes of Thrones, starting with the news that they will be “XXL.”
On commence avec @OCSTV qui vient nous présenter ses nouveautés, dont les séries HBO, qui sont en exclusivité sur OCS, et notamment #GameOfThrones qui bénéficiera d’épisodes XXL pour sa saison finale ! pic.twitter.com/jVCnRYVLfK
— Première (@PremiereFR) January 22, 2019
What exactly does “XXL” mean? Later, Premiere got specific with another tweet:
Roughly translated (thanks, Google Chrome), the tweet reads:
Useful clarification: @OCSTV explained orally that the first two episodes of the final season of #GameOfThrones would last 60 minutes, and the following four episodes 80 minutes according to the latest HBO news.
Let’s break that down a little further:
- Episode 801: 60 minutes
- Episode 802: 60 minutes
- Episode 803: 80 minutes
- Episode 804: 80 minutes
- Episode 805: 80 minutes
- Episode 806: 80 minutes
Now, the final episode lengths probably won’t be that exact — I doubt HBO is even done editing them, so expect things to track up or down here and there — but taking this as the basic truth, it means season 8 will run a total of 440 minutes, or seven hours and 20 minutes. That’s only two minutes shorter than season 7, which ran for 442 minutes. Episode 3-6 would all be about as long as “The Dragon and the Wolf,” which at 81 minutes is the longest episode of the series to date.
We’ve heard noise for a while about the final episodes of Game of Thrones being “feature-length,” and while 80 minutes is shorter than your average blockbuster in theaters today, there are plenty of good movies that run about that long, so it counts.
What do you think? Is this legit? Are you happy with the runtime for each episode? Let’s discuss!
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