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Good News For 'Game of Thrones' Fans: New Episodes Will Be Longer

Good News For 'Game of Thrones' Fans: New Episodes Will Be Longer

The finale will be a whopping 81 minutes

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Games of Thrones fans suffering withdrawal symptoms can sleep easy tonight, as it's been revealed that season seven of the hit fantasy drama will feature longer episodes than any of the previous installments.

Diehard GoT fans all over the world were disheartened to learn last summer that the upcoming seventh season would be shorter than usual - instead of 10 episodes, HBO would only be airing seven in 2017.

Hopes that the new episodes would at least exceed previous running times were dashed when Entertainment Weekly reported that "the remaining episodes are not, for the most part, longer."

However, luckily, for those of us who can't get enough of the show's 'sex, murder and dragons' combo, it looks as though the folk over at Entertainment Weekly may well have been misinformed.

Image credit: Game of Thrones/HBO

HBO.com has now revealed a full breakdown of Game of Thrones runtimes for season seven and it includes some mammoth, record-breaking episodes.

Here is the breakdown in full, via Watchers on the Wall, of the official runtimes on HBO.com:

Episode 1: 59 minutes.
Episode 2: 59 minutes.
Episode 3: 63 minutes.
Episode 4: 50 minutes.
Episode 5: 59 minutes.
Episode 6: 71 minutes.
Episode 7: 81 minutes.

As you can see, season seven's finale will be considerably lengthier than any other single episode to date, at a whopping 81 minutes.

The penultimate episode is also a record-breaker for the show, weighing in at an impressive 71 minutes.

The last two episodes will break the record set by the last aired episode, the season six finale 'The Winds of Winter', which stood at 68 minutes. This year's finale will reportedly top it by 13 minutes.

Image credit: Game of Thrones/HBO

While a few minutes here or there have been known to change in the HBO schedule, it still looks as if we're in for a lot more action than we were initially led to believe.

The seven new episodes make up close to seven hours 20 minutes. That may be significantly less than the average season (nine hours 15 minutes), yet at the same time it's the longest run of seven episodes in the show.

Now we only have just over a month to wait for the show to return and then only a further seven weeks until it's over again.

Make the most of it, because it's possible we won't see any more until 2019!

If you haven't seen it already, it's worth taking a couple of minutes out of your day to watch the season seven trailer:

Image credit: Game of Thrones/HBO

We can only guess what might be in store for us during an 81-minute episode, but if season six's 68-minute finale is anything to go by, we'd imagine quite a lot.

In the final episode of the last season, we saw an old bloke eat his kids in a pie, Daenerys begin her voyage to Westeros (with dragons, obviously) and the deaths of half the named characters in King's Landing. Oh, and we saw a church blow up.

By those standards, it's safe to say we're feeling excited.

The new season premieres in the UK at 2am on Monday 17 July, on Sky Atlantic.

Words: Paddy Maddison

Featured Image Credit: Game of Thrones/HBO