‘House of Cards’ Showrunner Talks Accidental Season Three Leak
“This is Washington. There’s always a leak,” the official House of Cards Twitter joked after the much-anticipated third season appeared on Netflix two weeks before scheduled. While the streaming service corrected the error 20 minutes after it was discovered, viewers who hit play on any Season Three episode prior to the fix were still able to watch the episode in its entirety, leading to lots of spoilers among fans. However, showrunner Beau Willimon is confident they haven’t figured it all out.
“There’s plenty of speculation on the Web in terms of what people gathered from watching those first 20 minutes or people who scrubbed ahead to subsequent episodes,” Willimon told The Hollywood Reporter. “And all I will say is some of that speculation is right and some of it is wrong. But I won’t tell you which is which.”
Season Two of House of Cards arrived on Valentine’s Day 2014 – which is how President Obama spent that romantic evening – but the third season was pushed back almost two weeks to February 27, 2015. However, on February 11th, the entire third season popped up on Netflix unexpectedly, resulting in a mad dash to the streaming service to see what trouble Kevin Spacey’s Frank Underwood would stir up as President of the United States. While some plot details leaked out, Willimon isn’t too worried about the season’s secrets being spoiled before its actual release date.
“No harm done,” Willimon said. “We take great care, obviously, to keep as much of the story secret as possible. A little bit of the story was let out but there are plenty of surprises ahead. Twenty minutes is not enough for people to have figured everything out.”
On February 11th, after the leak was plugged, the showrunner tweeted, “Well folks, when Frank Underwood wants to tease…he doesn’t fuck around.” The tweet was accompanied by a screenshot of Season Three’s opening episode buffering on Netflix. Aside from the surprise sneak preview, House of Cards has also unveiled its anxiety-ridden Season Three trailer.