No advance Screeners for Game Of Thrones Season 6!

In the wake of huge piracy fiasco, Home Box Office (HBO), the entertainment industry giant has definitely learned a lesson, and has taken a wise decision of not providing any advance copies or early screeners of Game of Thrones Season 6 to any media outlet for review. This decision was taken in view of the huge torrent leak of the first four episodes from Season 5, last year. Those episodes got downloaded illegally through torrents by millions of internet users all over the world.

This decision came straight from Michael Lombardo, President of Programming for HBO, who clearly said,

“We’re not sending out press copies this year, anywhere in the world. There will be no copies for review.” The lockdown applies to both physical media as well as digital-screening capabilities.”

 What happened last year?

It all started last year, when the first four episodes of Game Of Thrones Season 5 were leaked by a private BitTorrent tracker and, all of a sudden, the episodes were made available to famous torrent websites like, the Pirate Bay, Kickass Torrents, Torrentz, ExtraTorrent, RARBG  and many others. The source of the leak remains a mystery to this day, but investigators blame a reviewer who received the advance copy of the screeners. The leaked episodes broke all previous records of torrent downloads, with millions of users downloading the copyrighted content illegally.

Before this incident, the distribution of copies of early screeners of upcoming movies and TV series, have always been a common practice in Hollywood. But after this incident, HBO has become more vigilant than ever and the organization has made some critical amendments in its media sharing policies.

“It’s painful for Dan and David [when leaks happen],”explained Lombardo. “When you have press copies, inevitably friends ask, ‘Can I see your copy?’ There are things that happen. We talked about the upsides and downsides. Some of the press are fans who might be disappointed, but they’ll understand.”

Popularity of Games of Thrones

Well, no one can deny the popularity of Games of Thrones that the TV series enjoys amongst the binge watchers. It is the most watched TV Series as well as the most critically acclaimed one. GOT bagged 12 Emmy Awards last year, including the prestigious jewel-in-the-crown award the Best Drama Series. The Season 6 officially premieres on April 24 2016.