Are Movies Actually Getting Longer? We Found Out.

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0:56it's close enough car selling without a catch sell your car today on carvada pick up fees may apply it is friday april 3rd why do movies seem to be getting longer and longer it's an issue craig and i talk about a lot and i often get asked by people outside the business it does feel that way right project hail mary the current hit it's two hours and 36 minutes a length that would probably be unthinkable for a family film a decade or two ago one battle after another the best picture winner That one's$242. You don't hear too many people complaining when they like the movie. And those are just two examples.

1:31Question is, what does the data say about movie length? The film researcher Stephen Follows has crunched the runtime numbers on more than 36 ,000 films from 1980 to 2025. Turns out the average movie has actually not gotten longer. It's remained about 102 minutes for decades now. It's pretty interesting, right? Not what I would have thought. But, and there is a big but here, the movies that get wide releases in movie theaters, that's defined here as movies that gross more than$10 million at the box office, those have gotten longer, about 15 minutes longer over the past 20 years. So you're not crazy.

2:06By genre, it's largely action movies that have gotten longer, not comedies or horror. And dramas and theaters have actually gotten shorter. So the question is why? At a time when attention spans are pretty clearly getting shorter, especially among young people, Why are studios putting movies in theaters and asking their customers to spend more time there? It's a complicated issue and it requires more than just data. So I asked Todd Garner, the producer, to come on the show to discuss. Todd's not only an experienced producer of many movies, he's got the upcoming Mortal Kombat 2. And he's produced tons of studio titles, comedies with Adam Sandler, action films like Triple X, Gone in 60 Seconds, movies for theaters and streaming movies like Vacation Friends.

2:46And he was also a top executive at Disney in the 90s. He's got a great podcast called The Producer's Guide and a great perspective on the business. So we're going to discuss the root causes of longer length and what the studios think about this issue. And we'll attempt to answer the age-old question, why are so many movies so damn long? From The Ringer and Puck, I'm Matt Bellany and this is The Town.

3:11all right we are here with todd garner producer podcaster miss anything there nope okay good yeah uh welcome not necessarily even in that order right okay well i wanted to have you on the show because this is a topic that comes up all the time both on this show and in conversations around town it's like the length of movies people perceive it to be an out-of-control problem. The movies have gotten longer, longer, longer. Studios do not know how to say no to directors. The leverage of the streamers has forced these traditional studios to acquiesce where they may have known better and would have taken a cut to the movie a generation ago.

3:56Now they just let it be. But finally, you and I got some data here from the researcher Stephen Follows where you asked him to look at the data and say, okay, are movies actually getting longer? And the result was a bit surprising to me because the result is that movies in general have not gotten longer. It's just the movies that go to theaters have gotten longer or the movies that gross more than$10 million. So the movies that get wide releases, basically. Did that surprise you? Well, yes and no. I mean, it's sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy because that's the movies the studios are making are big ip big action movies movies that cost over you know 100 million dollars billy billy ray uh and i were speaking about and he the writers yeah billy ray the writer famously says it's easier to get a 200 million dollar movie made today than a 20 million dollar movie so i think it's a bit of a self-fulfilling prophecy because comedies aren't being released wide anymore and it's very hard to get adult dramas release wide, and they have a tendency to be around the 90-minute mark.

5:08Yeah, those movies have actually not. I mean, the data, let's just go through the data, because the average movie has not gotten longer. It's been about 102 minutes for decades now. That's the average. But the movies that gross more than$10 million in theaters, they have gotten 15 minutes longer over the past 20 years. Today, it's over 120 minutes. That's two hours. Used to be 107 minutes. That's where people are picking up on it. And you're right. It's the action films. Action has gone from averaging 102 minutes in the 1980s. Movies that you and I love, you know, the Schwarzenegger movies, Van Damme, all of those were, you know, much shorter.

5:49Today, they are 116 minutes. And comedy and horror have actually not changed at all. That's what's interesting. And dramas have gotten shorter when they're in theaters. which doesn't surprise me because people were more likely to see dramas in theaters before. So those movies might have been a little more, you know, sort of given them a little bit longer leash. It's the action movies. The age of IP has given the studios and the directors, I think, a feeling that they have to go longer on these movies. Do you agree? Do you hear that feedback from studios? Oh, wait. Well, I mean, I have a movie coming out called Mortal Kombat 2.

6:30and the fans want it to be longer. I mean, so I think you hit on half of it, which is that these big movies are now filmmaker-driven. I can remember, now the movies, we're talking about the Arnold Schwarzenegger movies, the Bruce Willis movies, those used to be producer-driven. So you think about Joel Silver and Jerry Bruckheimer and those guys back in the day, Larry Gordon, back in the day, they would preview the movies. Nine times out of 10, the audience would say it's too long and they would go to go to town on it make it shorter and in fact jules silver used to have a thing called the whammo chart where every 15 minutes he had to have a giant explosion or some sort of action beat happened the whammo chart i love it yeah to keep the audience to keep the audience interested so i think you're right half right that now these really talented really um good filmmakers are working in those genres ip uh the marvel universe dc etc plus they're making the only big originals that are getting made you know are christopher nolan or uh or big huge filmmakers like jim cameron or you know quentin and so if you look at the 150 minute nova club it's pretty much all those those guys in the original space yeah and jim was on this show and said that when he was previewing avatar 3 for bob eiger and the suits at disney eiger was like no we're good on time like don't need to cut that's fine like don't and this is a movie that's over three and a half hours yeah well it it earns it right so i i think like you and i talked about this offline when you first reached out to me which is project hail mary is 156 minutes long and i loved every minute of it right so no one complains about a long movie that's good and i think so i think one half of it is yes you're having big filmmakers with a lot of uh power telling the stories they want to tell.

8:22And look, they're artists and they're filmmakers and they have a tent. But isn't that the problem a little bit that every filmmaker thinks their movie is great and theirs is going to be the Project Hail Mary that nobody minds if it's two hours, 35 minutes. And most of them are ending up being wrong. I don't know about that. Because I think that if you look at the biggest movies of the last few years, a lot of them are over two hours long. So I think Alexander Payne once said, like, just make the movie as short as it is good. You know, a two-hour comedy is sometimes death, you know, so, but if you're laughing along the way, then maybe it deserves it.

9:06But I also think that the other half of it is in this IP-driven Marvel DC, I'm seeing it with Mortal Kombat, the fans love it. They want to get into it. They want it. They're seeing Easter eggs that no one sees. So you may be correct that if you're not a hardcore fan of the Marvel Universe or the DC Universe, you're not getting all those Easter eggs. You're not getting, oh, my God, that was exactly a frame. Like the Spider-Man trailer just came out. The fans were all like, that's a frame from, you know, volume one. They know everything. So they're enjoying it in a different way. And it's sort of luscious to them in a different way than a casual fan is.

9:44So you're not getting those dopamine hits that they're getting. Right. And so we've been so trained on our phones to need that dopamine hit every few minutes that if you're not getting it, you're like, oh, my God, this movie is just interminable. Right. But if you're getting that dopamine rush because you're seeing things that the casual fan wouldn't see. And, by the way, if you're a filmmaker, if you're Kevin Feig or you're, you know, James Gunn, you want those fans to get those dopamine hits because they're the loudest. So it's a hard one. Well, it's a little bit about how fan culture has kind of taken over the movie making process as well, in many cases with these larger movies where you've got to satisfy the fans.

10:24And I've spoken to studio executives about this. And there is a feeling that if you are going to justify the theatricality of the movie, there needs to be added value or the perception of added value. And that's where you get to three or four endings where these superhero movies, they have a climax. And then the villains got to turn into a giant version of the villain where you then have to battle that. So there's a there's a perception that if you're battling streaming here and you're battling phones and all the other things out there, the movie needs to be perceived as an event. And a way to do that is to lengthen the movie.

11:08Yeah. And more is more, right? And so there's two issues with that. That's the positive side. So if you're a fan, you're getting that. You're getting the, oh, and the next rush. Oh, and the two endings and the mid-credit and the end credit. You're getting all that. If you're a person who has kids, you're trying to go out for the night, you park your car, you have 45 minutes of previews, the movie's three hours. That's a big commitment. That's one piece of it. And then the second piece of it on the negative side is, unlike streaming or your phone, You can't just stop it and use the restroom. So you're sort of feeling like this guilt of like, am I going to miss something?

11:42Am I going to walk out? It's awkward to walk out sometimes. So movies have a higher bar in that regard of, you know, making the audience feel good, feel that they've got their money's worth, but not overstaying their welcome. But in studio conversations, do you ever hear pushback that the movie's getting too long? Always. Or get it down under two? well the two-hour thing is an interesting thing because that that is a that's sort of old school that's like you're probably even you're used to be in the contracts right well the reason why is because of vhs yeah so you didn't i don't know if you guys remember going to blockbuster and you had like the two out like the titanic on vhs you're like god damn it's two hours it's two tapes yeah yeah i do remember that so that was a thing that was a real thing in the late 80s early 90s well Also, they were being formatted for television as well.

12:32For sure. And they wanted to fit with commercials. If you had a one hour, 40 minute comedy, that was perfect for a two hour slot with commercials. I can tell you, I have never in my 30 plus years of making movies as a studio executive, as a producer ever at a preview audience heard them say, make it longer. So, and I've never heard a marketing guy ever come out of a preview and go, you know what that movie was 20 minutes too short like it's just the nature of the beast of like well if you loved it at two hours you're gonna really love it at you know 110 minutes right so yet it persists yet in this genre of action movies the length persists and with some of these awards movies the length persists well you said it right you're living by the sword and you're diving dying by the sword if you're gonna be in business and you're gonna let christopher nolan direct a batman movie.

13:25You have made a deal with him because you so appreciate his talent and you're going to let him tell his story. And because he's an artist, he's not going to go for the whammo chart. He wants stuff to sit and breathe for a minute. And you've made that deal. And it's paid off, by the way, every single person that's ever worked with him. So I think that if you're, and it's so much more of the studios now are really putting so much faith in the director, because what else do we have to put faith into the business? Well, Sidney Sweeney, but yeah, go ahead. True, in the right genre, yes. And so, you know, if you're going to make that deal for, you know, the 15th DC movie or the 75th Marvel movie, and you're getting a filmmaker like Ryan Coogler, you're probably not after a preview go, it's 20 minutes too long, figure it out.

14:14You know, you're dealing with an artist. So you want to be smart about it. And the data shows that the bigger the budget, the longer the film. $100 million plus movies now average 129 minutes. And 20 years ago, it was 122 minutes. So that is proof of, you know, evidence of what you are arguing there. If you're entrusting your big franchise movie to the filmmaker, you're making it whatever they want to make it. Yeah, and back in the day, the producers, you know, they're much more amenable to the audience. And they are much more eager to give the audience what they want if they're the ones who are, you know, the movie is branded after.

14:57I don't know, though. You just mentioned Bruckheimer. F1, the movie, two hours, 35 minutes. Well, he learned that from Pirates, too. So I will say this about Jerry. Pirates, also very long movies. Top Gun Mavericks, very long. Well, I've made, I think, between, I think, like 10 or 11 movies with Jerry. And I will say this. He is 100 % always backs the filmmaker. but will also know where he's starting to feel a little restless. He is the audience. So if you're getting those dopamine hits in a way that propels it along, he is the first person to say, keep it in. Because you'd rather have a lot of good stuff than just take good stuff out just to fit in some sort of arbitrary length.

15:39Greg, you had something? Well, I just wanted to point out, you guys haven't mentioned the exact numbers yet about the really long movies and how much that has gone up, where I feel like because the average film, like there's a lot of horror and comedy and drama that's kept the average down but the percentage of very long films has gone way up films over two hours went from 16 of wide releases in the 80s to 40 percent in the 2020s and films over two and a half hours went from two percent to nearly 10 percent which is a huge jump that when you go to the theaters now a lot of these movies are minimum over two hours and most of them over two and a half well we we have the 150 club here so There's the 10 in the last 10 years, and you'll know the director of every one of them, right?

16:20Oppenheimer, Avatar, The Way of the Water, The Irishman, Avengers Endgame, Zack Snyder's Justice League, The Batman, Dune, Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, No Time to Kill, and The Hateful Eight. So it's like, it's a lot of Quentin and a lot of Nolan. And Cameron, and Scorsese. He's responsible for most of them. And artists, geniuses, auteurs of our time. And if you're, I defy any poor studio executive to say to any of those gentlemen, you know what? We could lose 20 minutes. But here's the thing is that with exceptions, those movies all did well. Yes. The audience did not seem to care. At least the numbers show that.

17:03If the movie is good, it doesn't matter. And people probably like it even more. The kind of movie that comes from your filmmaker of choice. The Brutalist. Yeah, The Brutalist. We don't have to talk about the artsy movies because there's always going to be those. I don't think The Brutalist was a mainstream hit, even though it got a bunch of Oscar nominations. That movie was never going to be huge. But the movies that do have an audience, if the movie is long and it's good and the filmmaker has a fan base, it doesn't seem to matter. The question we have not addressed here is do the theater owners have any voice here?

17:40because they don't like this. Every time a movie's over two and a half hours, they lose an evening show out of that. And it can impact the box office. I've talked to executives at theater chains about this exact issue and they feel powerless. They nervously check that runtime when it's finally delivered to them. Yeah, I mean, it was way worse when it was one theater and that was it. Now that you have multiplexes, you can move stuff around. And I will say, yes, I'm sure they would love for everything to make$200 million and run 90 minutes. That would be a dream because you could just keep rolling it over in the same theater.

18:18But because they have the ability to move things around with the exception of IMAX, really. But even in your IMAX theaters, you probably have some 70 millimeter and some digital prints as well in your theater. You can move stuff around. And it's not like, look at this summer. It's not like there's so many movies that the theaters are throwing their hands up going, oh no, a two and a half hour movie, we're going to lose a showing. because you can slide a movie that's maybe not doing as well at night down earlier. I noticed it last weekend when AMC added more screens for Project Hail Mary. Of course.

18:51And there were things that were added during the weekend because they were noticing a surge in interest in that one. I get that. And probably there was a couple movies that weren't, that were either at the end of the run or weren't performing as well that got the shit into the stick. Yeah, there's not enough going on. It used to be there was like four or five big movies at a time out. and now it's like, it's just Project Hail Mary for three weeks. Well, we'll see this weekend. This weekend's gonna be packed in theaters with Mario and Project Hail Mary and Hoppers is still doing well. And they got an A24 movie that's a wide release in the drama.

19:21But I get it. It's less of an issue when you have multiple options there. Yeah, when you're at the Cinerama Dome, it was harder, right? If you're showing a Quentin movie, you're showing it three times, not four. Yes, but Quentin owns his theaters now, so he doesn't have to worry about it. There you go. Smart man.

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21:51So let's talk about the streamers because there is a perception out there that the streamers do not care about length. It's actually better for them if movies are longer because it's more engagement, it's more time spent. And the data doesn't really get into whether the streaming only movies are longer. Do you get the sense when you make a movie for streamers that they care at all about this issue? Yes. I mean, well, they have a different issue because their barrier to entry is so low. Yeah. That if you aren't and they track it to the second, they can tell you the moment people checked out. So if you're not keeping people interested the whole time, you're going to lose them much different than in a theater.

22:34You don't have, you know, 50 percent of the people walking out on on streamers. You're like, nope, I'm out. So. So they have a version of the Wham-O test. Joel Silver was a genius and created a test that the streamers now use. Yes. And so you want to make sure you keep your audience engaged the entire way because you will lose them. So I've never had them say, hey, can you make it longer because we want to hold the eyeballs longer? Because that's not going to work. If you have a shitty movie, if it's eight minutes long, it's not going to work, right? So it doesn't matter if you've made it an hour, 20, or 90 minutes.

23:05So it's like, okay, that 10 minutes, is that going to matter? Well, no, not if it's not good. If it's good, you've got an extra 10 minutes of people watching, staying on this site. So they have a much different metric. But you're right. They don't care as much if the movie's playing great. There's no some arbitrary number that they're trying to hit. They're like, cool. But they want it front loaded, is what you're saying. Yes and no. I know there's been that, like, I guess Matt talked about, you have to restate the plot every 15 minutes. I have never heard that from them. But what I do know is, yeah, you got to grab them from...

23:40Same thing, back in the day, those movies you're talking about too, right? They aren't those movies. You always had a pre-credit, right? Someone always like, like in Lethal Weapon, you know, she jumped off a building or someone gets shot. You set up this, you grab the audience. So that is definitely true at Netflix. You want, they're going to click on it. You want to hold them to get them into the story. So that is a true statement. But beyond that, you got to hold them, the rest of the way as well. So they have a different set of issues because the walkout is so easy. Yeah, but the version of that for Netflix is the periodic grab moment.

24:19The, you know, consistent, there can't be a long, do you get that specific feedback from Netflix? There's too long between set pieces. There's too long between moments. I haven't had that from the executives. you will definitely hear that from the audience. I mean, the audience will usually tell you. And having, you know, it's the most fun and the most hectic and the most painful is that preview. You feel it. When you're sitting in there and you're like, uh-oh, this is 20 minutes, nothing happening. If you can reduce that pain by pushing those good moments together, then great. But again, if you're working with a really high-end, powerful filmmaker, they may love that.

25:02That may be the exact thing they want, is for that slow, you know, pondering feeling before the thing kicks in again. That's the difference to me between Raiders of the Lost Ark 1 and 2. Raiders of the Lost Ark 1, you have these quiet moments where they're talking. Raiders of the Lost Ark 2 is just balls to the wall, action, action, action, action. I prefer the first one, quite frankly. Yeah, but the audience, maybe not. I don't know. Well, the audience probably would tell you, yeah, the audience probably would tell you, oh those those moments are a little slow and if and if you're not you know if you're not spielberg and lucas you may fall trapped to that yeah the interesting thing also in the data is that it's not a franchise problem per se the franchises actually they both got longer standalone films and franchise films the only the gap between them is only about three minutes so it's not like once you have a big IP driven franchise, that's when the rails come off and you can make these movies as long as you want.

26:04A lot of these movies are long to begin with. And I think that's a, it's a reflection of the kind of action superhero age where if you're launching something, you want more bang for your buck in it. Yeah, well, and if you're a massive fan of Spider-Man and you're watching this movie, like I said, and you're a deep fan, you're going to get the deep cuts and the little tiny Easter eggs that probably you or I wouldn't get if we're not that deep into the lore. And they're loving it. And the filmmakers are very aware of that. And so when they get those little moments where people are going online going, did you see in minute 52 where the thing that was right at?

26:44That's what you want to keep engagement with your fans who are the ground zero of when you're making a movie no one you're not just gonna get probably walk-ins to the to the fourth avengers those people have those people have been there with you and the people that do walk in you're that's not really your core audience i know although although the problem then became with avengers is everybody it was like i can't follow this it's too much homework well yeah that that's a whole different story yeah um let's look at your movies because you could go in the craig Horlbeck Hall of Fame here. Craig does not like long movies.

27:20Your runtime across 41 films that you have produced is 102 minutes. Congratulations. You are a hero. But it's a little bit of a skewed result because I do a lot of comedies. True. That's okay. You know what? Take the W. Take the W. It's okay. Only one film of yours is over two hours, and that's Pearl Harbor. Yeah. Well, and that movie is a big giant movie that had a lot to say and so it it it probably deserved that link yeah releasing oppenheimer at three hours is a ballsy move i think only nolan only nolan gets that the other the other filmmakers if this were you know a minus filmmaker it's two and a half hours yeah i didn't even know that any minus filmmaker could even get that movie made quite frankly i I mean, maybe not.

28:11I mean, that's the thing. He's he's he's he's the go. Netflix would do it. Netflix would do it for sure. Yeah. All right. Well, this is fascinating. I don't think this is a problem. This is a pacing problem rather than a length problem. I personally don't like long movies, but I don't think the business cares as long as the audience is there and they keep showing up for these longer movies. I don't think we're going to see the change. I think it's a lot of the slower stuff. Like Crime 101 was like 220 or like, I remember like Den of Thieves 2 was two and a half hours. And it's like the big set piece movies, I understand a little bit more.