Newspaper reports say that the upcoming July 17th Game of Thrones season 7 premiere will be an extended episode… And so will the finale.

According to The Daily Telegraph , we’ll be getting a little extra Winter in as season 7 of Game of Thrones kicks off. It’s reporting that the show’s first episode will run to almost an hour, rather than the more standard 48-49 minutes you get from a US TV show.

Whether or not this is just a longer premiere, or whether all of the episode will come in this longer format is unclear.

If the latter were to be the case, it has been pointed out that this would be consistent with claims from the show’s stars that they are shooting for longer this season. That’s despite the series actually being a shorter seven-episode run. However, as the show’s executive producer, D.B. Weiss put it, “You kill a couple dozen characters, the people who are left by default need to carry more dramatic weight.”

So, this could be a one-off addition, rather than an ongoing trend. However, if 59 minutes were to become the norm for season 7, that could add to more than an extra episode for fans to enjoy.

Supplemental: 

According to a report at Entertainment Weekly, which seems to double as a dig at other reports on the matter, the five middle episodes of the season will be of standard length. This means we won’t be getting anywhere near the amount of extra time we hoped for.

However, as is the way with the series, the finale will be longer again – running in, the site says, at well over an hour. So there’s that..

The Game of Thrones season 7 premiere is due on Sky Atlantic on July 17th.

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Are you excited for season 7 of Game of Thrones? Let us know in the comments!