Are movies getting longer?

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Are movies getting longer? (Stephen Follows)

Either I’m getting older or movies are getting longer… and longer … and longer.   So which is it?  I took a look at the numbers. I studied the running time of the top 100 US-grossing films since 1994 (2,200 films in total) and all films shot in the UK 2005-14 (2,142 films). In summary… The median length of …

Either I’m getting older or movies are getting longer… and longer … and longer.   So which is it?  I took a look at the numbers.

I studied the running time of the top 100 US-grossing films since 1994 (2,200 films in total) and all films shot in the UK 2005-14 (2,142 films). In summary…

  • The median length of a top 100 US-grossing films between 1994 and 2015 was 110 minutes
  • Running times have increased in six of the past seven years
  • The longest films are historical and western films and the shortest are animations and documentaries.
  • Peter Jackson makes the longest movies in Hollywood, with a median running time of 169 minutes.
  • The median running time of UK feature films (2008-14) was 94 minutes.
  • Films with lower budgets have shorter running times
  • The complete extended Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies are a combined 21 hours long

It’s reassuring to read that I wasn’t the only one to observe this trend in filmmaking, and to find that somebody else had done the research to save me from feeling the need to do so myself! The full article also makes a number of other interesting observations; worth a read.

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