Long movies are perfect for streamers. But they’re bad for movie theaters.

When audiences head to theaters to watch Dune: Part 2, they’re in for a cinematic sci-fi epic.

Equally epic? This movie has a running time of approximately 3 hours.

To watch both of Denis Villeneuve’s two-part film adaptation of Frank Herbert’s first film in the Dune series (the 2-hour 35-minute Dune premieres in 2021), you’ll need 5 hours and 20 minutes. Must be blocked. From your schedule.

In the case of “Dune,” the long running time doesn’t seem to deter audiences. “Part 2” has already garnered rave reviews from critics and is poised to reinvigorate the box office in 2024. But it feels like it’s becoming more and more common for him to spend more than two hours at multiplexes, and it’s not always meaningful time spent.

please think about it. Did “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of the Songbird and the Snake” need to be his 2 hours and 37 minutes? The moment in “Napoleon” when Joaquin Phoenix orders his troops to march (2 hours and 38 minutes) was really necessary. I wonder if it was? People love seeing Keanu Reeves kicking his butt in ‘John Wick: Chapter 4,’ but does it make it any less special when he’s doing most of it? 3 hours?

As longer movie runtimes have become the norm, Netflix now offers a “90-minute movies” category for those looking for a refreshing movie. And back in 2022, “Saturday Night Live” parodied movie runtimes, with Pete Davidson claiming that his movie “The King of Staten Island” had a two-hour runtime. He jokingly rapped that he needed a “short movie.” 17 minutes, “I needed every minute of it.”

There are various reasons why movies run longer. Perhaps the super famous writer was too strong to kill any of his loved ones and for anyone to protest. Perhaps the streaming service’s boss will debut the movie with a bonus minute viewed as a new indicator of success.

“Long movies are okay!” Hollywood seems to be saying.

However, movie theater owners disagree.

Movie theaters charge a fee for long movies.

For movie theaters, showing longer movies often means less running time and, as a result, less box office revenue.

And if theaters don’t want to shorten showtimes, they have to pay staff for long hours to keep theaters open late.

“Long show times are difficult for theater owners,” said Russell Vanordel, vice president of Fridley Theatres, an Iowa-based chain.

“What we find with these very long films is that we want to have as much screen time as possible so our guests can get a lot of screen time within their schedule. But even with a movie this long, “it takes a lot of time to clean the auditorium between shows. Suddenly there are very few shows available for guests.”

Of course, long films are nothing new. In the 1950s, his three-hour-plus Bible stories such as “Ben-Hur” and “The Ten Commandments,” both of which were blockbuster hits at the time.

But fast forward to modern Hollywood, and it looks like all the IP-powered blockbusters are trying to become “Ben-Hur” and aiming for comparable screen times.

Even if a feature film is a box office hit, there is still economic value in showing it in theaters. But critical and commercial failures like Argyle (2 hours and 19 minutes) are less so.

“You ask yourself, where are the sacrifices being made?” Michael Barstow, executive vice president of Main Street Theaters, which operates in Nebraska and Iowa, told BI. “A 7 p.m. set? Maybe you’re pushing start at 6 p.m. so you can get to 9 p.m. or 9:30 p.m. Or you’re trying to get a 7 p.m. or 7:30 showtime. I’m concentrating, but it ends up being 10 p.m.”

Those executives say theaters lose tens of thousands of dollars if showtime is taken away. This is troublesome for business in an industry still trying to recover from the pandemic (about 5,000 theaters operating in the U.S. in 2023, compared to 5,869 in 2019, according to a New York Times report).

Some smaller theaters are thinking outside the box to make money.

Josh Frank, known around Austin for his Blue Starlight Drive-In, recently acquired Eastside Cinema, Austin’s last single-screen movie theater.

Initially, it programmed Hollywood titles, including some with run times over two and a half hours.

“No one showed up,” he said.

He found his niche when he allowed community organizations to curate his offerings. The only stipulation is that titles must be selected that are less than two hours long so that Frank can show them on screen twice a night.

“It’s going really well, it’s huge,” Frank said. “They’re showing documentaries and alternative films, and they’re energizing a community of people coming to the movies and sharing the experience with their friends.”

Theater chains can’t be this bold. They just have to wait for a successful short title to come along. His recent hits “Anyone but You” and “Bob Marley: One Love” lasted less than two hours. And try to get as much screen time as possible.

“There’s an art to filmmaking, whatever it is, but to me there’s an even more interesting level of art in being able to tell a story in 90 to 120 minutes and do it successfully,” VanNoordel said. he said. It benefits movie theaters. ”

Feature films used to be king at the box office. Now they are some of Hollywood’s biggest busts.

For a long time, long films were tolerated because they were successful. In 1997, director James Cameron’s 3-hour and 15-minute Titanic caused a stir in the industry, but it went on to become the highest-grossing movie of all time. Well, until Cameraon came out with Avatar 12 years later and took the crown.

What is the runtime? 2 hours 42 minutes.

Between Cameron’s two blockbusters were The Lord of the Rings, Harry Potter, and the Pirates of the Caribbean series, all of which were blockbusters running over two hours.

To say the least, The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King had a running time of 3 hours and 21 minutes, but that clearly didn’t hinder the film’s success. The film brought him more than $1.1 billion in box office revenue worldwide, making him the winner of 11 other films. Oscar Awards, including Best Picture.

But recently, titles with substantial runtimes have been underperforming at the box office.

Indiana Jones and the Dial, which had a running time of just over two and a half hours, was such a flop that Variety reported that Disney lost nearly $100 million. The budget for “Argyle” was $200 million, and just recently worldwide sales exceeded $75 million. And The Flash, the movie that proved audiences were burned out on superhero movies, had a running time of just under two and a half hours and grossed just over $100 million at the domestic box office.

“The movie theater experience is unique and it’s great to be able to captivate the audience,” Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, told BI. “But if you get sucked into a movie that’s too long and you don’t like it, it’s no fun.”

There are growing complaints that the movie is too long. But what do the studios say about it?

“I haven’t heard directly from them,” VanNoordel said.

Filmmakers sign contracts with studios that promise to produce films in two hours or less, but are not forced to do so.

BI was able to have candid conversations with veteran studio executives about runtime themes, as long as their identities were not revealed.

Studio executives were not shy in admitting that there was a “lack of organizational control” when it came to curbing studio showtimes. But it’s not for lack of effort.

One of Hollywood’s dirty secrets is that studios force feature film directors to sign contracts agreeing to deliver their films within two hours of running time.

Unfortunately, these contracts are only worth as much as the paper they are printed on.

“Depending on the director and the studio, it’s probably more likely to be ignored than enforced,” the executive said of the deal.

“That’s where it gets really interesting,” the executive added. “Do the people who write the checks want to enforce that? And that’s where the rubber meets the road.”

We’re a long way from the days when big studio executives like Jack Warner and David O. Selznick ruled Hollywood with dictator-like control. Today, it is the filmmakers who are influential. Especially when the filmmakers have a money-making hit on their hands.

“When you’re an established director and Netflix pays you a top-tier salary and says, ‘Here, show us your vision,’ they love it,” the executive said. . “That complicates things. Directors come to the studio and say, ‘Hey, don’t mess around, I’m going back to making movies on Netflix.'”

The streaming giant has brought in Best Director Oscar winners such as Alfonso Cuaron (2018’s “Roma”), the Coen brothers (2018’s “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”) and Guillermo del Toro (2022’s “Pinocchio”). However, their crown jewel was the 2019 release of director Martin Scorsese’s long-in-development gangster film The Irishman.

Running time is 3 hours and 29 minutes. (Scorsese’s latest film, Killers of the Flower Moon, had a similar running time and was financed by Apple and released theatrically by Paramount.)

The executive said that when production executives asked about the runtime, which affects the number of showing hours per day, his answer was more than 2 hours and 20 minutes. But he also gives one piece of advice.

“What I’ve said over and over again is don’t worry about screen time if it serves the story,” the executive said. “That’s when it doesn’t serve the story. That’s when you have to worry about running time. And that’s not an unusual situation. You can say that about movies that came out last year and movies that haven’t come out yet. So we… They said, “This movie needs something, so we have to find eight minutes and cut it out.”

The difference between the “need a trim” opinion in Hollywood 15 years ago and today, the executive said, is the Teflon-like arrogance of today’s directors.

“That’s a tough problem to solve when you have an established director, but guess what? That’s the head of the studio.” Assumption “It’s an important part of their job,” the executive said.

As for the long runtimes of big titles, management doesn’t expect any changes to happen anytime soon. That means movie theaters will have to adapt, too.

Main Street Theaters’ Mr. Barstow said, “I think audiences have generally proven that if it’s the right case and the right filmmaker, they don’t care about the length.” “We’ve always worked on that to build our business around what people want to see.”