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If you love movies, if you talk with people about movies, or if, like me, you write and think about them for a living, you have no doubt heard this question in the last few years:<\/p>\n
\u201cWhy are movies<\/a> so much longer now?\u201d<\/p>\n Before you can attempt to answer that question, though, you need to figure out:\u00a0Are\u00a0<\/em>they really<\/em>\u00a0getting longer? Or is that just something anecdotal, and perhaps inaccurate?<\/p>\n After all, our attention spans are shorter than ever. People\u2019s brains have grown accustomed to consuming online videos that run seconds or maybe minutes, not hours. Movies\u00a0could be\u00a0exactly the same as they\u2019ve always been, and it\u2019s us who have changed.<\/p>\n Maybe not.\u00a0Film industry analyst Stephen Follows<\/a>\u00a0\u201ccrunched the running times of 36,431 movies\u201d for\u00a0The Town<\/em> podcast<\/a>, and found some interesting data.<\/p>\n If you look at\u00a0every<\/em> film produced in the last few decades, Follows says, \u201cthe average running time has barely changed in decades. It has hovered around 100 to 103 minutes since the 1980s. In 2024, the average film was 103.6 minutes long.\u201d<\/p>\n But that\u2019s the average of\u00a0everything<\/em>. If you look at just \u201cwide theatrical releases (the films that open in hundreds or thousands of cinemas across North America)\u201d then you see something else. Those movies alone \u201caveraged 106 minutes in the early 2000s.\u201d But by the current decade, \u201cthat figure had risen to 114 minutes.\u201d<\/p>\n \u201cThis means,\u201d he adds, \u201cthat if you\u2019re a regular cinemagoer, you are now routinely sitting through films that are around ten minutes longer than they were a generation ago.\u201d<\/p>\n READ MORE:<\/em> The Longest Films Ever Made<\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n