How often have you gone to the movies lately and been—in the words of Nicole Kidman—“not just entertained, but somehow reborn” in under two hours?
Working with a filmmaker who has final cut doesn’t necessarily mean anything goes, though. If a film is running longer than the promised length, producers will encourage cuts. Test screenings can be an important tool in those conversations with particularly self-indulgent directors. One longtime producer suspects that fewer test screenings during the pandemic might have contributed to the glut of two-hour-plus films in recent years.
There’s an argument to be made that it feels like movies are getting longer because studios now favor the overstuffed, spectacle-fueled films that perform better in theaters. “Casual moviegoing, where you wait until the weekend to pick what to see, has pretty much been supplanted by streaming,” says“Now when you leave your house to pay to see a movie, you want an emotional sure thing for your time and effort. You also want a bigger experience than streaming a movie in your living room.
The pandemic, too, seems to have reminded people of the value of a live, in-person experience. How else do you explain the thousandsfans are shelling out to attend her three-hour-plus hour concerts when they could just stream the whole thing for free on TikTok? That doesn’t mean streaming movies can’t be long too—Apple, after all, will be the exclusive streaming home toafter it has a short theatrical run.
One upside to a long film, of course, is that it lets the movie industry demonstrate that it has something weightier to offer than the videos we scroll through on our phones. When I ask Singer, the director, what he makes of this idea, he ponders for a few seconds. “Perhaps movies now are more of an artifact,” he says. “I mean, it’s still a contemporary medium, but it is a medium that was invented in the past and we’re experiencing it now as, like, a holy thing.
If that’s the case, you can sign Singer up for the conservation committee. He’s working on a new script at the moment, he tells me. He’s not yet focusing on how long the movie will be, but probably about two-and-a-half hours.
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