Of course, most other TV series would simply send out a press release or a tweet announcing their premiere dates. But as we all know, Game of Thrones is not like most other shows.
Perhaps that’s why, HBO spent 60 minutes on Thursday afternoon melting a giant block of ice on Facebook live to make the big reveal, reports Adweek. As it turned out, season 7 of the hit fantasy drama will debut on July 16.
Ironically, the stunt went wrong, given that the livestream was interrupted twice and stretched for more than an hour. But more than 162,000 people stuck around until the big reveal.
Earlier in the day, HBO had asked its fans to head to its Facebook livestream to find out when season 7 will premiere. As the livestream began, users were asked to type ‘Fire’ in the comments to help melt the block of ice and reveal the premiere date encase in it. But just 15 minutes later, the livestream ended with no date revealed.
This was followed by another Facebook livestream 15 minutes later. “The fire in the realm was overpowering but we’re back,” the team explained. But 15 minutes later, the second video ended too.
Game of Thrones icons such as Lena Headey, Nikolaj-Coster Waldau (Jaime Lannister) and Gwendoline Christie (Brienne of Tarth) popped up on the stream to encourage fans to type “FIRE” in the comments, but that didn’t speed up the process. Those online started to get upset when it became clear it was going to take a long time for the ice to melt.
The third and final Facebook Live feed began at 2:55 p.m. with two giant flames directed at the ice in an effort to finally melt it, and the premiere date was finally revealed at 3:09 p.m., followed by this teaser be seven episodes long.
HBO had announced last year that Game of Thrones would not be returning until this summer, instead of its usual spring run, because Season 7 production required shooting in winter locales. The season will be seven episodes long.