Game of Thrones season 7 episode 1 run time revealed

The first tease of Game of Thrones season 7 episode 1 is online — it doesn’t give a whole lot away, but it tells you that the premiere is going long.

There is no official title for the premiere just yet, but according to HBO, the episode is going to be running in total a good 59 minutes. Basically, that will fill up the entire hour of programming that the network has for the show. This is probably also going to be a tradition that you see for the majority of the season, given that it just makes sense for HBO to extend most of the episodes near the end of the series. There are only thirteen of them left, after all!

If one was to go ahead and guess, the easy assumption to make at the moment is that the final episode of season 7 will probably run over an hour (many of the finales do), and the same can probably be said for the series finale down the line. While these extended run times would feasibly push back much of the other HBO programming later and later into the night, it’s hard to really think that anyone would mind when you consider the sort of ratings that Game of Thrones brings in and the sort of lead-in that it provides for some other shows.

Hopefully, this longer run time also gives a little bit more juice to the premiere as one that really gets the ball rolling on the remainder of the season, given that the HBO series doesn’t have a tendency to start off with the biggest premieres. It tends to take a few episodes to get going, and then it’s more or less akin to a TV freight train rolling along by the time you get to episode four or five. They gotta speed up the process this season! There’s really no other way to do things unless they are okay with momentum hitting the show a little bit later in the seven-episode season.

For those wondering, it could be some time before HBO releases the official title or details for the premiere; based on past patterns, it could be early July, in fact.

What do you think: Are longer episodes of Game of Thrones a great thing? Share now in the comments below!

Meanwhile, be sure to head over to the link here in the event you do want to get some further news right now when it comes to Game of Thrones. (Photo: HBO.)