Did you get a shiver when you realized Robert Pattinson's "The Batman" was only a few minutes short of three hours?
Perhaps you, like other comic book fans, believe that there can never be too much Bruce Wayne. How long will it take? How long is it going to take you? It should be injected straight into your eyes.
Perhaps you've become accustomed to stopping the TV every 30 seconds to check your phone, get a snack, go to the lavatory, or doom-scroll on Twitter after two years of pandemic isolation. You've pondered missing "The Batman" completely because the prospect of spending 180 minutes looking at a silver screen is so terrifying.
When delivering their final edit, filmmakers take into account all of these reactions. Hollywood's A-listers in leading roles, a big-name director and a compelling pitch are key in selling a film, of course. But a movie’s running time is one of the less flashy yet deliberately thought-out elements. Unlike precisely timed network television shows, movies have flexibility. But there are good reasons why studios and directors want to avoid bloat — though in some instances, it’s unavoidable.
It may not be scientifically proven, but sometimes it feels like movies are, indeed, getting longer. Many of this year’s biggest releases — “No Time to Die” (2 hours, 43 minutes), “Spider-Man: No Way Home” (2 hours, 28 minutes), “Dune” (2 hours, 35 minutes), “Eternals” (2 hours, 37 minutes) and “The Last Duel” (2 hours, 32 minutes) — may as well have run forever and a day.
Nonetheless, it's hardly a brand-new trend. Several previous successful films, like 1939's "Gone With the Wind" (3 hours, 58 minutes), 1962's "Lawrence of Arabia" (3 hours, 47 minutes), and 1959's "Ben-Hur" (3 hours, 32 minutes), managed to become commercial hits despite their mind-numbing lengths. "Spider-Man" and "No Time to Die," for example, are recent hits. These instances show that there isn't necessarily a link between the duration of a film and its success. The majority of the top-grossing films of all time are between two and three hours long. Only one Oscar winner for best picture, "Annie Hall," clocks in at around 1 hour and 30 minutes.
Because streaming services are not under the same financial constraints as conventional studios, they do not require the same stringent restrictions. Since Netflix allows the freedom for Martin Scorsese’s “The Irishman” to be three and a half hours, Zack Snyder’s “Army of the Dead” to be 2 hours and 28 minutes or Spike Lee’s “Da 5 Bloods” to be 2 hours and 34 minutes, it’s harder for the old guard to impose strict limits on filmmakers.
Let’s, as Julie Andrews sang in “The Sound of Music” (2 hours, 54 minutes), start at the very beginning.
In the early days of cinema, the duration of a movie directly correlated to the amount of film that was available. That’s the reason in the first decade of the 20th century, most flicks would range from 10 to 15 minutes. By the 1920s, technology had advanced enough to accommodate feature-length films, and by the 1950s, running times for epics, like “Gone With the Wind” or “The Ten Commandments,” became a selling point, one that studios used to great effect to compete with television. Audiences could watch any old show at home, but only cinemas offer the kind of immersive storytelling worth leaving the couch and parting with hard-earned cash.
The deployment of digital cinema in the late ’90s also allowed running times to vary. It freed filmmakers from the physical limitations of cumbersome film reels. And computerized versions of movies meant three-hour features didn’t cost as much to ship and store.
But, as Spider-Man might have put it had he run a film studio, with greater run times come greater responsibility — the lengthier a movie gets, the more that anyone with money on the line stands to worry. At the box office, longer movies mean fewer showtimes per day. Fewer showtimes reduce ticket sales. That makes it harder to break even and eventually turn a profit. At the same time, audiences have started to favor special-effects-driven movies, which usually come with bigger price tags and require higher returns to justify those increased costs.
“It’s almost to say, we’ve spent the money — let’s flaunt it,” he notes.
For most theatrical films, length contributes to the scheduling game. Theaters budget roughly three hours per screening to accommodate time for trailers beforehand and janitors to clean up after patrons. For a three-hour movie like “Avengers: Endgame” or the upcoming “The Batman,” exhibitors need to account for an additional hour, which cuts at least one daily showtime. With “Endgame,” multiplexes stayed open for 72 hours straight to meet sky-high demand, but not every blockbuster hopeful gets that red-carpet treatment.
Those are only the concerns for a finalized film. When directors initially sign on to a major studio movie, they have a contractual obligation to deliver it at two hours. It’s almost unspoken that nobody pays attention to the rule, but it protects studios should a filmmaker deliver a movie with a truly egregious length.
“You sign it, and then you ignore it,” says Jon Turteltaub, the director of Nicolas Cage’s action-adventure series “National Treasure” and the Jason Statham-led shark epic “The Meg.” “Everyone from top to bottom wants the best film possible.”
A shorter movie is less expensive to put together and therefore less of a financial risk. Such considerations start with the earliest physical part of a movie idea: the screenplay. A longer script requires more time to film. In turn, additional shooting dates tack on millions of dollars. With a visual-effects-driven film, an extra 30 to 60 more minutes of screen time can increase a budget by as much as 25%, one source at a major studio estimates. The more footage on tape, the more time is needed in post-production stages, which adds some $50,000 to $100,000 per week, the insider adds. That takes into account aspects like audio mixing and sound editing. It also requires more days to have actors on set. During the pandemic, longer filming schedules means a greater risk of having a COVID-19 outbreak delay production. Overall, trimming any excess before cameras begin rolling can be a difference of tens of millions of dollars.
