There are a lot of major events happening in the world of TV and movies this year, but perhaps the biggest of them all is Stranger Things. The utterance of those two words is enough to bring fans to a standstill but this year the Netflix series returns for its fifth and final season, so there is no doubt that all who are even remotely interested in the program will be tuning in to see how it all ends in Hawkins.
There has been a lot of intrigue about this final season already. Between its long production, the fact that it's almost been a decade since the first season premiered, and the thrilling first looks which have teased the dangers to come from the supernatural world of the Upside Down, fans have been invested for a very long time.
Perhaps the most intriguing aspect about it all, however, is the episode runtimes as we all know that they will be long. Well, now a new report has seemingly confirmed just how long they will be. And, well, they're long.
All Stranger Things season 5 episodes will reportedly be over an hour
According to a new report from Puck News, all episodes of Stranger Things season 5 will have a runtime over one hour. That on its own is pretty larger than life, but what's even better for fans of the show is that the episodes will reportedly range from 90 minutes to 120 minutes. Yep, that means that some of the installments will actually be two hours long.
This is undoubtedly part of the reason why Netflix has decided to split the season into not one, not two, but three parts. The first release will come on Wednesday, November 26, and it will consist of four episodes, meaning that there will be plenty of entertainment to go around over the Thanksgiving period.
The show will also make its presence felt over the remaining holidays of the year, as the second batch of episodes will premiere on Christmas Day, releasing three super-sized installments before the series finale will premiere on New Year's Eve. All episodes throughout the three releases will drop during primetime, arriving at 9:00 p.m. ET / 6:00 p.m.. PT.
The holiday evening releases for Stranger Things certainly break a Netflix trend as the streamer usually releases shows earlier in the day than that, but it's certainly going to draw the viewers in over the course of the holidays.
We know that the streamer always opts for larger-than-life visuals when it comes to Stranger Things and it sounds like the series is going bigger than ever for its final season. A new report claims that the budget for the season is $400 million which is obviously way over the typical budget for a TV series. We've also seen in recent years that movie studios try to steer clear of larger budgets like that even for franchise hits as it can be a risk (which has definitely been clear after a number of Marvel Studios' own releases struggled to break even at the box office due to their insanely large budgets).
Netflix obviously has faith that Stranger Things season 5 will be a major hit. And, honestly, there's no reason to think otherwise.