It’s not just your imagination — Hollywood tentpoles are getting longer.
Whether it’s awards contenders like the three-and-a-half-hour “Killers of the Flower Moon” (206 minutes) or popcorn flicks like the upcoming nearly three-hour “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes” (158 minutes), movies in 2023 are testing the bladders of audiences and the patience of theater owners.
While journalists continue to debate the surge of longer-than-expected movies, Hollywood insiders and a majority of paying moviegoers see them as more of an annoyance than a problem, a recent poll shows. Theaters would generally prefer every major movie to come in at under two hours.