Title announced for Netflix 'Gilmore Girls': How show's format will change

A title has been revealed for the upcoming "Gilmore Girls" episodes on Netflix.

According to "Gilmore" star Lauren Graham, the upcoming feature will be titled "Gilmore Girls: A Year in the Life." It has previously been reported that the new installments will be four hour-and-a-half episodes. 

Many original cast members, including Ms. Graham, Alexis Bledel, and Melissa McCarthy, are returning.

The TV show "Gilmore Girls" originally aired for seven seasons from 2000 to 2007 on the WB and then the CW. The new episodes mark the return of creator Amy Sherman-Palladino, who departed the program before its seventh and final season.

Traditionally TV programs run either as hourlong programs or, as often seen with sitcoms, in half-hour installments. The 90-minute plans for the "Gilmore" Netflix episodes, a run time that may remind viewers more of a film than a TV episode, is the newest instance of those behind TV shows embracing new formats of episodes. 

Apart from models in which all the episodes in a season are released on the same day, as seen with Netflix programs like "House of Cards" and "Orange Is the New Black," some of the people working behind the scenes on shows say that having the length of episodes be up in the air lets them regulate themselves more in terms of what run time is best. 

"I don't know if we'll go past 30 [minutes], but they've definitely encouraged us to go past 21:15," Tina Fey, co-creator of Netflix's "Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt," said prior to the release of the second season of the show. (A network comedy show would usually run 21 minutes and 15 seconds.) "We have to be our own guides here and not let things get too fat or too slow."

However, the opposite is happening as well. Last year, The Wall Street Journal reported that some cable networks are making repeats of shows such as "Friends" run more quickly in order to be able to air more commercials.