‘Game of Thrones’ Season 8 Trailer Smashes Viewing Records

The Watch doesn’t end for HBO, apparently, as the trailer for Game of Thrones has smashed previous viewing records.

The first substantial look at the eighth and final season of Game of Thrones was viewed over 81 million times in 24 hours across streaming platforms including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, and others, a clear indicator that excitement for the series is at an all-time high.

The previous record for HBO was held by the trailer for Season 7 of Game of Thrones, which garnered 61 million views in the first day.

Many people are eager to see how the war against the White Walkers will end, as well as find out who will finally sit on the Iron Throne. But only a few people know how it will go down right now, except for a few actors, crew, and of course showrunners D.B. Weiss and David Benioff.

While speaking with Entertainment Weekly, the producing duo understand the expectations riding on the series finale, but they’re confident in their storytelling abilities to deliver a satisfying conclusion on Game of Thrones.

“When something has been sitting with you for so long, you have such a specific sense of the way each moment should play and feel,” said Weiss. “Not just in terms of ‘this shot or that shot,’ though sometimes it’s that as well. So it’s not really fair to ask somebody else to get that right. We’d be lurking over their shoulder every take driving them crazy making it hard for them to do their job. If we’re going to drive anybody crazy it might as well be ourselves.”

“We want people to love it. It matters a lot to us. We’ve spent 11 years doing this. We also know no matter what we do, even if it’s the optimal version, that a certain number of people will hate the best of all possible versions,” Weiss added. There is no version where everybody says, ‘I have to admit, I agree with every other person on the planet that this is the perfect way to do this’ — that’s an impossible reality that doesn’t exist. I’m hoping for the Breaking Bad [finale] argument where it’s like, ‘Is that an A or an A+?’”

And while there might have been changed along the way, the duo insist they knew the end of the story before they even began to tell it on television.

“From the beginning we’ve talked about how the show would end,” said Benioff. “A good story isn’t a good story if you have a bad ending. Of course we worry.”

Game of Thrones premieres on HBO on April 14th.

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[h/t Deadline]