Game of Thrones Prequel A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms Reportedly Sets 30-Minute Episodes, Prompting Fan Backlash

Game of Thrones fans are bristling at reports of a lean runtime for A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, clamoring for longer episodes to do Westeros justice.
Westeros is back on TV soon, but maybe not in the way you expected. The new prequel series A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms is apparently going bite-sized: short season, short episodes, big reactions.
The leak: short, sharp, and... six weeks long
Leaked runtimes point to a six-episode season with installments landing around 30 minutes each. Do the math and you get roughly three hours total. For a Thrones-adjacent show, that is tiny. No surprise, some fans are already rolling their eyes and wondering why this is not just a movie.
- Episodes: 6 total
- Runtime: about 30 minutes each (roughly 3 hours across the season)
- Comparison point: Game of Thrones ran 10 hour-long episodes per season in its early years
- House of the Dragon: Season 1 had 10 episodes; Season 2 had 8; all around an hour
- Source material: George R.R. Martin's Dunk and Egg novellas
- Timeline: set about 100 years before the events of Game of Thrones
- Cast: Peter Claffey as Ser Duncan the Tall; Dexter Sol Ansell as his squire, Egg
- Premiere: January 18, 2026 on HBO and HBO Max
Fans are not exactly thrilled
The reaction online has been... skeptical. Condensed version: people are side-eyeing 30-minute chunks for a franchise built on hour-long installments. Some miss the days of 20-plus episode seasons (good luck with that), others flat-out say three hours total should be a film, not a season. One recurring gripe frames the rollout as "engagement farming": stretch a movie-length story over six weeks to keep monthly subs intact. You do not need a raven from the Citadel to see that argument.
But the author is bullish
George R.R. Martin has been talking this one up for a while and says the team nailed the adaptation:
"as faithful an adaptation as a reasonable man could hope for."
Worth noting: the Dunk and Egg stories are novellas, not 800-page bricks. A brisker format potentially fits the material. Whether that plays for audiences who associate Westeros with sprawling hour-long episodes is the real test.
So, what are we getting?
A compact Westeros road story about a towering hedge knight and the sharp kid he swears to protect, built from Martin's beloved side tales, landing in weekly half-hours. If those leaked runtimes hold, expect something closer to an old-school adventure mini than a Thrones-length saga. We will see in January 2026 whether short and sweet actually tastes like victory.