You’re not imagining it: Movies are getting shorter
Chopped run times allow theaters to play more films, boost ticket sales
The most heroic feats of this summer’s popcorn movies may be the blessedly short run times.
After The Hobbit, Transformers and Harry Potter franchises conditioned us to equate big-budget studio fare with punishing lengths of 21⁄ hours or more, a 2 recent crop of films suggests that may no longer be the case.
Christopher Nolan’s critically acclaimed World War II drama
Dunkirk clocks in at a brisk 1 hour, 46 minutes. That’s notably slimmer than the director’s past summer movies Inception (2 hours, 28 minutes) and The Dark Knight
Rises (2 hours, 45 minutes). Tom Cruise’s disappointing
The Mummy was a mere 1 hour, 51 minutes this summer, and Stephen King ’s similarly derided The
Dark Tower (in theaters) is a relatively painless 1 hour and 35 minutes, surprisingly brief, given that it cherry-picks from an eightbook series. New Zealand filmmaker Taika Waititi recently told Collider.com that his upcoming Marvel movie Thor: Ragnarok is only about 100 minutes. All of this could signal the death knell for the bloated blockbuster.
“I definitely see the beginning of a trend,” says Erik Davis, managing editor for Fandango.com and Movies.com. “You never see anybody complain about a short movie, but if a movie’s too long, they’ll complain.” Director Nikolaj Arcel says
Dark Tower was always envisioned as a tightly told introduction to King ’s fantasy world where the vengeful Gunslinger (Idris Elba) and villainous Man in Black (Matthew McConaughey) battle. The original script was about 100 pages, and editing shaved off an additional 10 to 12 minutes.
“I’ve made films where I sit through them like, ‘ Oh, my God, Nik, why didn’t you cut out 20 minutes of this?’ I certainly have indulged myself sometimes in my own work,” Arcel says. “If it’s a trend, I think it’s a good trend.”
Part of the reason we could be seeing shorter movies is that studios are trying to appease theater owners, and in turn boost ticket sales.
“The old conventional wisdom about shorter movies is that you can have more (showings) in a day,” says Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst for tracking site comScore. “If you have a 3-hour movie, you’re cutting out at least one showtime.”
Factor in lengthy advertisements and trailers, and “people are very aware of the experience they’re going to have when they see a movie, so shortening that run time really helps them come out feeling like they didn’t give up a huge part of their day,” Davis says.
Protracted running times may not be an issue for moviegoers if the film is high-quality. After all, the summer’s three biggest hits — Wonder Woman, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 and Spider-Man: Homecoming — all run well past 2 hours.
For a studio that’s “spent $150 million on a movie and another $50 million on marketing, and it comes in at an hour and a half, it may feel like, ‘Wow, we paid all that and got that,’ ” Dergarabedian says. “But at the end of the day, if the movie kicks ( butt) at the box office and makes even two times the budget, it’s a win.”