Winter Is Still Coming: Game of Thrones Gets a 4th Season

Chris Taylor2013-04-02 18:20:50 UTC

Was there any doubt that HBO's hit show Game of Thrones would return to our screens next year after Season 3 wraps up? Actually, yes — the creators and producers of the show have been very careful to always use the word "if" when discussing a Season 4.

Now they can drop the "if." HBO confirmed Tuesday morning that the show was being picked up again in 2014.

If the executives had any doubt that Game of Thrones had legs (in the sense of popularity; we already know it offers plenty of limbs in those famous "sexposition" scenes), they would have been erased by the ratings for the first episode of Season 3, which broadcast Sunday.

Some 4.4 million viewers tuned in, which is up 13% over the Season 2 opener, and even up 200,000 viewers over the blockbuster season finale. That puts Game of Thrones on a course to overtake True Blood as HBO's most popular show. If you factor in international distribution and DVD sales, it's already there.

The 4.4 million figure, of course, doesn't count those viewers who illegally downloaded the show. Thrones is the most popular TV show on the BitTorrent network. HBO's CEO and the show's producers are at pains to point out that most of the illegal downloads are coming from abroad. In particular, they point the finger at Australia, where broadcasters delay the show for months.

"If Australia was getting the show the same day as America, maybe the Australians wouldn't be downloading hundreds of thousands of copies," writer and executive producer George R.R. Martin told Mashable at a premiere event in San Francisco last week.

HBO estimates that counting all forms of viewership, 12 million people watch the Westeros-based fantasy show. "We think that number is going to increase this year, and may become the most watched show in our history," CEO Richard Plepler told us at the event.

A fourth season means the show will at least complete its adaptation of Storm of Swords, the third (and some would say best) book in Martin's Song of Ice and Fire series.

Image courtesy HBO

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