These days The Guardian echoes in its pages a survey among the American population that has brought to light what is the ideal length of a movie. A question that was born in response to the controversy surrounding Martin Scorsese’s latest film, ‘The Moon Killers’, which lasted 206 minutes (3 hours and 26 minutes) and many cinemas cut it in half, allowing an intermission for which the director had not given permission. “A little respect,” Scorsese himself commented at the time. “You spend five hours in front of the TV and go to the theater for three-hour shows. Have a little bit of respect for cinema.”
According to the survey, lThe viewers’ preferred length is 92 minutes (1 hour and 32 minutes). It is also preferred by producers and distributors, as it is usually synonymous with relatively cheap movies with which you can schedule a lot of showings up to date. For films like ‘The Assassins of the Moon’ there can barely be two or three sessions per day, which means less ticket sales.
Another piece of information that the survey brings to light is that only 15% of people find a movie longer than two hours acceptable and the figure is even more ridiculous if we talk about more than two and a half hours. Only 2% would be happy if the film exceeded 150 minutes. Some very curious data if we look at the Oscar winners of recent years or the highest-grossing films in history.
Duration of Oscar-winning films
Duration of the highest grossing films in history
As you will see, the most award-winning and successful films in history have never adhered to that standard. Could it be that the bad ones have believed that more is better, have copied the duration and have ended up making people fed up with endless and mediocre stories? Lots of surveys attest that The average duration in cinemas has skyrocketed from 1981 to 2022. If 40 years ago it was 110 minutes per tape, a couple of years ago it was 141. Perhaps you are only willing to invest so much time when it is a social phenomenon or a proclaimed masterpiece. What other explanation do you see?
