The season four premiere of "Game of Thrones" shattered previous HBO records by drawing in 6.6 million viewers, making the show the most-watched program since "The Sopranos" finale.
According to TheWrap, HBO's "Game of Thrones" viewership didn't surpass "The Sopranos" finale, which brought in a massive 11.9 million viewers, but the series' season opener is up by 52 percent from last year.
"Game of Thrones" is also breaking piracy records as more than one million people have illegally downloaded the series. According to The Boston Herald, Time Warner CEO Jeff Bewkes isn't worried about the piracy because of its "promotional value."
"Piracy tracking firm Excipio detected 1.17 million unique IP addresses accessing torrents of the season premiere within the first 15 hours of the episode popping up online," The Herald reports. "That's more than 'Thrones' racked up in the first 24 hours following its April 1 release of the third season last year, which reached 1.15 million."
The HBO series "Game of Thrones" airs on Sundays at 9 p.m.
Showrunners David Benioff and Dan Weiss recently spoke about season four of the series in an interview with Entertainment Weekly. Beinoff explained season four is the midway point of the series, and promised it will have more action than ever before.
"It feels like this is the midpoint for us," Benioff said. "If we're going to go seven seasons, which is the plan, season 4 is right down the middle, the pivot point."
"I would say it's the goal we've had from the beginning," he added. "It was our unstated goal, because to start on a show and say your goal is seven seasons is the height of lunacy. Once we got to the point where we felt like we're going to be able to tell this tale to its conclusion, that became [an even clearer] goal. Seven gods, seven kingdoms, seven seasons. It feels right to us."
