I crunched the running times of 36,431 movies to work out why it feels like movies are getting longer, and to test the theory that the two-hour movie is what we should all expect
"As far as I can discover, there is no cinema anywhere in the world that charges a higher ticket price for a longer film."
German here, it's very common practice here (and in other parts of the world too, I believe). It's called Überlänge. One of the biggest German movie chains:
Just like See Winter (https://substack.com/@seewinter) said, here in Belgium there's at least 1 movie chain that does charge more for films exceeding 130 minutes (Kinepolis - €1).
I've not seen this in the other independent cinemas here.
Great piece. Your data on franchise escalation got me thinking about whether the pattern holds across all major franchises. Turns out Mission Impossible has added 46 minutes across seven films, but the MCU is essentially flat across 37.
I also found that source material to be a stronger predictor of runtime than I expected.
"As far as I can discover, there is no cinema anywhere in the world that charges a higher ticket price for a longer film."
German here, it's very common practice here (and in other parts of the world too, I believe). It's called Überlänge. One of the biggest German movie chains:
> 120 mins +1 €
> 135 min +2 €
> 150 mins +3 €
https://cdn.cinemaxx.de/-/media/files/preisupdate_august2025/preisupdate_oktober2025/preisliste_kiel_september_2025.pdf?la=de-de
Just like See Winter (https://substack.com/@seewinter) said, here in Belgium there's at least 1 movie chain that does charge more for films exceeding 130 minutes (Kinepolis - €1).
I've not seen this in the other independent cinemas here.
Great piece. Your data on franchise escalation got me thinking about whether the pattern holds across all major franchises. Turns out Mission Impossible has added 46 minutes across seven films, but the MCU is essentially flat across 37.
I also found that source material to be a stronger predictor of runtime than I expected.
Explored a few of these threads here: https://cprfilm.substack.com/p/four-footnotes-on-film-runtime-follow
Thanks for a thought-provoking post. Loved digging into it.