HBO To Pre-Screen ‘Girls’ Debut In Nine Cities

HBO will host “Girls Night Out” screening events in eight cities around the country on the same evening as Girls‘ New York City third-season premiere, which takes place Monday, January 6 at Jazz at Lincoln Center. A live feed of the New York premiere also will include red carpet arrivals and personalized messages from series creator Lena Dunham.  Attendees in Atlanta, Austin, Boston, Chicago, Dallas,  Philly, San Francisco (delayed) and Washington, D.C. will then see new episodes before the series’ return January 12 on HBO.

Girls third season will begin with a special presentation of two new episodes back-to-back Sunday, January 12 (10-11 PM), immediately after the debut of True Detective. HBO announced the third-season pickup in January — a few days after Dunham accidentally broke the news on Alec Baldwin’s podcast.

The second-season finale of HBO’s Girls drew 632,000 viewers — down from the 1 million who watched the show’s Season 1 finale.  It also was down from the 866,000 who tuned in for the Season 2 premiere the same night creator/star/executive producer Lena Dunham won a Golden Globe for Best Actress in a Comedy Series and Girls won Best TV Comedy. Over three airings of the finale, Girls drew 1.13 million viewers. The series has been averaging a gross viewership of the 4.6 million this season. Besides watching the show on HBO and on DVR,  27% of them watched on HBO Go and HBO On Demand. That makes Girls the most-watched show on the additional platforms of any current HBO series. Girls‘ first season premiere, on April 15, 2012, pulled in 872,000 viewers.

Created by and starring Dunham, the Emmy-winning series Girls is a comic look at the assorted humiliations and rare triumphs of a group of girls in their 20s. Dunham executive produces along with Judd Apatow, Jenni Konner and Ilene  S. Landress; Bruce Eric Kaplan is consulting producer.  The cast also includes Jemima Kirke, Allison Williams, Zosia Mamet, Adam Driver and Alex Karpovsky.