Posted in: Amazon Studios, TV | Tagged: the boys

The Boys: Eric Kripke Shuts Down Final Season Running Time Rumors

The Boys Showrunner Eric Kripke shuts down rumors on social media about the episode running times and costs for the fifth and final season.

For some reason, episode runtimes and how much seasons/episodes cost have become this "thing" on social media that people care about. The two biggest problems with that kinda conversation? More often than not, the costs and numbers of minutes put out are usually varying degrees of bullshit. And then, there's the lack of a "bigger picture" perspective. If you get past the sticker shock and look at how the money plays out based on the number of episodes and their running times, the pricetag is still better than what you see going on over at the Film side. Prime Video and Showrunner Eric Kripke's The Boys found itself the subject of one of these conversations, and it gave Kripke a chance to shut down a rumor about the fifth and final season. A report posted online claimed that "All episodes in Season 5 of 'THE BOYS' will be under 30 minutes," and that they were "between 20 to 30 minutes each." In addition, it claimed that the "budget per episode is $50M-$60M."

Here's a look at Kripke's response, which makes it pretty clear just how accurate that reporting was – but at least it got a good laugh from Kripke:

At the beginning of July, filming on the final run wrapped, with Kripke making it official in a heartfelt post from the set. "This is the last time I'll ever be on this set. It'll be torn down soon," Kripke wrote as the caption to his Instagram post, which included a look at Kripke on the set of The Seven's meeting room in Vought Tower. "It's bittersweet, but my primary feeling is gratitude. We have the best cast, the best crew, the most fun story to write, and something that is impossible to predict: the right timing. You wait your whole career to have maybe two of those things, if you're lucky. We got all of them. To #TheBoys family: thank you, I love you all. To the fans: thanks for watching, can't wait for you to see the grand finale. That's a wrap. (Photo by [Karen Fukuhara]." Here's a look at Kripke's post, followed by his thoughts on the series finale and more:

The Boys: Eric Kripke Feels "A Fair Amount of Terror" About Finales

During Sony's "Creator to Creator" podcast, Kripke and Shawn Ryan (The Night Agent) had a chance to share what life is like as a showrunner, and if there were two people who have the resumes to have this conversation, it's Kripke and Ryan. Beginning at around the 33:50 mark in the clip above, Kripke reveals his mindset in terms of crafting a series finale that remains true to the show's creative vision while satisfying the faithful viewers. "I am in a fair amount of terror about a series finale," Kripke shared. "You can count in one, maybe two hands, the truly great series finales… the graveyard is literally filled with terrible series finales."

Kripke continued, "How do you tie up the stories? How do you do it in a way that is emotional and satisfying? How do you do it in a way that creates — frankly — the illusion that some detail that you dropped in Season 1 or Season 2 is now suddenly coming back to pay off?" He continued," You could have the greatest show for years, but if you stiff that ending, and that's what's sending everyone out in the parking lot, they go, 'Oh, maybe that show wasn't that good'."

Regarding series finales that hit and hit hard, Kripke shared what he learned from writers and how they approached the lead-up to Breaking Bad S05E16: "Felina" (written and directed by series creator Vince Gilligan). "'Breaking Bad,' to me, is as good as a show gets, and I was able to ask some of those writers, I'm like, 'The way you tied everything together, how did you do that?' And they said, 'Oh, we had just a list of loose ends on our board that we had no idea what to do with them, that we would keep compiling over the seasons. And then when it came time to do the final season, we would just start checking them off of like, how do we pay them off, cuz we're gonna look like geniuses because the Season 2 storyline becomes this.'"

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