Mad Men Returns April 7, and It’s Back With a Two-Hour Movie

Matthew Weiner talked to The New York Times this morning, and let some bare-bones details go as to Mad Men’s return. The nuts-and-bolts: The first episode of the sixth and second-to-last season airs April 7, and that episode is two hours long. But it’s not a two-hour episode; it’s a mf’ing movie!

What’s the difference? I don’t really know. But Weiner’s calling it a movie, and that’s good enough for me: “The network requested it this time whereas last time” (season 5’s premiere was two hours, too) “it was my idea to come back with a splash. It worked well last year and they wanted to try it again. For me, I was like, well, I don’t have the same set of problems, but I do have a way to start the story with a movie. It has some cliffhanger elements to it, it does propel you into the rest of the season — it does foreshadow a lot what the season is about. But I was like, I want to write a movie here, that we can create the atmosphere and vibe of the season.”

See? Movie. Movie. Movie.

What else? Weiner says he was initially holding on to some stuff he could save for the last season, but then just basically said fuck it, let’s go: “I decided to throw it all in. When you’re on a show where drama is somebody watching a phone ring, you really shouldn’t take out any story ideas you have.”

Oh, and he’s not yet saying what year this one’ll be set in: “It will advance in time, as it does. I can’t say how much or how little … on this show, it’s a very rich, full orchestra, and we like to follow what is the next stage in these people’s lives.”

You won’t say what year, huh, Matthew? Well, then let’s go ahead and assume it’s 1984, and the season premiere starts with Bobby Draper having just gotten home from a Whitesnake concert.

Filed Under: AMC, Mad Men, Matthew Weiner

Amos Barshad has written for New York Magazine, Spin, GQ, XXL, and the Arkansas Times. He is a staff writer for Grantland.

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