Game of Thrones season 7 to end with movie-length “longest episode ever”
Well, assuming you like quite short movies
While we’re only getting seven Game of Thrones episodes this year instead of the usual ten, fans can take some comfort in the fact that at least two of them will be longer than the usual 60 minutes – and that one will approach the length of a traditional movie.
“We have two episodes over 60 minutes this year,” showrunner Dan Weiss told EW.
“One will be our longest episode ever — it’s coming in around 90 minutes,” added showrunner David Benioff. “Another is going to be our shortest episode at 50 minutes.”
Now, leaked episode lengths put this particularly epic episode (which looks as if it could well be the season finale) at closer to 81 minutes, which one could argue is slightly less filmic, BUT we’d then point you to this list of great films under 90 minutes on IMDB, which includes the likes of Zombieland, Colin Farrell’s Phone Booth, Eraserhead, The Lion King and This is Spinal Tap. Clearly, 81 minutes can still be considered movie-length.
And previously, Game of Thrones’ longest episode was a mere 69 minutes (last series’ finale The Winds of Winter), so however long this episode is exactly it’s clearly a big step up that will run even longer when you include advert breaks (which won’t happen on parent subscription cable network HBO but will on UK GoT broadcaster Sky Atlantic).
As for that shortest episode, well, it’ll probably only be seconds shorter than previous episodes that clocked in at around the 50-minute mark, so on a per-episode basis, season 7 will actually be longer than ever before.
Fingers crossed this all means there’ll be even more time for the Dorne storyline, eh?
Game of Thrones returns to HBO on 16th July, and Sky Atlantic in the UK on 17th July
