Movies getting longer is not a feeling. A researcher named Steven Follows checked the runtimes of 36,000 theatrically released films from 1980 to 2025. Average wide release length went from 106 minutes in the 1990s to 114 minutes today. Films with budgets over a hundred million dollars run even longer. Then add 20 to 30 minutes of pre-show ads and trailers that didn't used to exist.
In the 1980s, 14 percent of wide releases ran more than two hours. In the 2020s that number is 32 percent. Studios want these films to feel like events. Denis Villeneuve says younger viewers are craving it, that Gen Z grew up binging three and four hour stretches of television and that's what epic storytelling feels like to them now. Box office returns back him up. The Brutalist ran over three hours and won awards. Project A-Team ran 156 minutes and people loved it. Oppenheimer was 180 minutes.
The new Keanu Reeves film is 83 minutes long. Richard Crouse was excited about that. Shorter almost feels ambitious now.
Topics: movies getting longer, movie runtime, Steven Follows study, Gen Z cinema, streaming storytelling
GUEST: Richard Crouse | http://richardcrouse.ca
Originally aired on2026-04-09
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