They may have won more awards than you can shake a camera at but, by goodness, they did go on a bit.
Not that the three-hour screentimes of the likes of Titanic or The Godfather seemed to bother audiences – or the many directors that followed their epic example.
Now, however, movie makers have been told to throttle back on their bum-numbing masterpieces if they want them to be shown in cinemas.
Clare Binns, the head of Picturehouse Cinemas, said: ‘I talk to producers about this and say: ‘Tell the director you’re making the film for an audience, not the directors.’
There’s always exceptions, but I look at a lot of films and think: ‘You could take 20 minutes out of that.’ There’s no need for films to be that long.’
Picturehouse includes intervals when they are built into a film – as with The Brutalist, which was released in 2024 and has a runtime of 3hrs 35mins. The movie, directed by Brady Corbet, won three Oscars and grossed a profitable £37million.
Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer, which is exactly three hours long, earned nearly £730million and took home seven Oscars.
And Avatar: The Way Of Water raked in £1.83billion, making it the third-highest grossing film in history.
Pictured: Scarlett Johansson is pictured as the Black Widow in Avengers Age Of Ultron which aired in 2015
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer (pictured: Cillian Murphy portraying J. Robert Oppenheimer), which is three hours long, earned nearly £730million at the box office
However, other lengthy blockbusters have not fared so well. Babylon, which clocked up a run time of 3hrs 9mins, was one of the biggest box-office losers of 2022.
And festival chiefs have warned that the trend of extended run times is creating problems.
Ms Binns, this year’s Bafta winner for outstanding contribution to cinema, told The Guardian: ‘It means you only get one evening show. I think it’s a wake-up call to directors. If they want their films in cinemas, people have to feel comfortable about what they’re committing to.’
Martin Scorsese has been a driving force in the trend for longer films, with his 2023 movie Killers Of The Flower Moon running for 3hrs 26 mins. This beat his previous record, 2013’s The Wolf Of Wall Street, which is exactly three hours long.
Plenty of older films – including 1939’s Gone With The Wind (3hrs 58mins) and 1959’s Ben-Hur (3hrs 32mins) were commercial smashes despite their running times. And none of the past 20 Oscar Best Picture winners has been under 90 minutes long.
However, Ms Binns warned that directors need to ensure a comfortable viewing experience for audiences if they want people to keep returning to the big screen.
This month, Leonardo DiCaprio questioned whether audiences still had an ‘appetite’ for cinema after his critically acclaimed film One Battle After Another failed to break even at the box office.
Ms Binns, who will receive her Bafta on February 22, said: ‘During Covid, everybody got used to sitting on couches and watching streaming services. But that’s changing. We’re working with the streamers to bring people in.’
