Why are movies so long these days?

“John Wick: Chapter 4”: 169 minutes, “Avatar: The Way of Water”: 193 minutes, “James Bond 007: No Time to Die”: 163 minutes, “The Batman”: 177 minutes – big blockbusters always seem longer to last. Especially in the cinema, where the film cannot be paused quickly to go to the toilet or get more popcorn, such films can be a deterrent. One of the longest movies to hit theaters this year is probably “Killers of the Flower Moon” with Leonardo DiCaprio, with a running time of 206 minutes.

But it is precisely these blockbusters that attract people to the cinemas, while 100-minute romantic comedies or horror films end up directly on a streaming platform, writes CNN. The average running time of a feature film is between 80 and 120 minutes.

Przemysław Jarząbek, a data scientist, evaluated nearly 30,000 movies from the IMDb database and gave an insightful answer: no, movies are not getting any longer. Jarząbek writes: «The differences [in der Laufzeit] are too small to be noticed. We can say that films have averaged the same length over the past 60 years. Whatever criteria we take into account, the result is the same».

Randal Olson, also a data scientist, comes to the same conclusion. He writes: «With the introduction of television in the 1930s and 1940s, the film industry suddenly had a competitor. In response, film producers have been forced to raise the bar and produce more epic films to keep viewers in theaters.” Films were therefore extended by about 30 minutes. This standard remains to this day.

Past feature films include “Gone with the Wind” (1939, 233 minutes), “The Ten Commandments” (1956, 220 minutes), and “Lawrence of Arabia” (1962, 216 minutes).

In the 1970s and 1980s, films became about ten minutes shorter, a possible explanation for this was the time limit on videocassettes. With the advent of DVDs, the runtime was back to its original ’60s length, and Olson says not much has changed since then.

Why do we feel like movies are getting longer and longer? Pure marketing, writes The Guardian. According to CNN, audiences are more willing to see a feature film if it receives critical acclaim, significant attention, or is nominated for an award.

Ultimately, making a movie is not an exact science. There’s no formula for how long it takes to tell a compelling story, or the exact moment when a viewer starts to get bored.