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:
The last Theatrical movie here in the USA was Titanic in 1997 because of the long length of the movie. Because of streaming services, Social media and short clipped videos on Tik Tok and YouTube has made the attention span of young people shorter which is one reason people want shorter length movies under 2 hours. There are other reasons as well with how well movies are written, cinematography of how the movie is presented. Some of how greatest cinematographers are retired or dead now. The great directors like Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas and Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan are masters of making longer than 2 hour movies that you want to set through and watch no matter how long it is in the past. This might be another reason why we need more great directors to make great longer movies. You have presented a great synopsis of the film industry though in your article Mr. Follows. Just an addendum of thoughts to your story.
Both in The Netherlands and Switzerland (idk if somewhere else in Europe) intermissions are in every movie. Here in Switzerland they don't even respect any tension moment. The intermission comes exactly at movie's halftime
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
The last Theatrical movie here in the USA was Titanic in 1997 because of the long length of the movie. Because of streaming services, Social media and short clipped videos on Tik Tok and YouTube has made the attention span of young people shorter which is one reason people want shorter length movies under 2 hours. There are other reasons as well with how well movies are written, cinematography of how the movie is presented. Some of how greatest cinematographers are retired or dead now. The great directors like Coppola, Spielberg, Lucas and Peter Jackson, Christopher Nolan are masters of making longer than 2 hour movies that you want to set through and watch no matter how long it is in the past. This might be another reason why we need more great directors to make great longer movies. You have presented a great synopsis of the film industry though in your article Mr. Follows. Just an addendum of thoughts to your story.
Both in The Netherlands and Switzerland (idk if somewhere else in Europe) intermissions are in every movie. Here in Switzerland they don't even respect any tension moment. The intermission comes exactly at movie's halftime
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.