'Heroes Reborn' to get super-sized premiere, bumps 'The Blacklist'

Get ready for more Heroes than you expected.

Heroes Reborn will now premiere as a two-hour event on Thursday, Sept. 24 from 8 to 10 p.m. ET “We think the fans will really appreciate the longer premiere,” said NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt, who announced the news during NBC’s executive session on the semi-annual Television Critics Association press tour.

The new Heroes date will thereby push the third season premiere of The Blacklist — which was slated to premiere following Heroes at 9 p.m. ET — to Oct. 1.

While the show’s initial run from 2006–2010 was riddled with hiatuses, reruns, and breaks in the regular viewing pattern, the new series is one closed, 13-episode arc with a beginning, middle, and end, and Greenblatt says it will run consecutively with no repeats.

“The world changed since the show went off, and I think [creator] Tim Kring is the first person to tell you that it would have been better off if it had just been a 13-episode show,” he said. “The first season had 13 and was embraced, and then [Kring] had to go into 22 episodes a year and there was a break in the air pattern. I think it was a show that would have benefitted from fewer episodes and a more compacted kind of season.”

Greenblatt also apologized to critics for not being able to screen the new Heroes revival just yet, given the “enormous” amount of special effects still being added. The show will be one of six television series (and the only American broadcast series) to screen for the Toronto International Film Festival’s inaugural TV program this year, and Greenblatt assured reporters that even the folks at TIFF haven’t seen it.

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