Joe and Anthony Russo, the directors of Avengers: Endgame, have confirmed the film is “at the three-hour mark,” though edits are still being made to the film.
In an interview with Collider, one of the directors said, “I think the studio is down with what the best story is. Right now, we think the movie is playing well and we’ve had great responses from our test audiences and we’re feeling very good about where it is. We’re still doing work to it. We’re not done with it.
“Again, this is a culmination film of 22 movies, it’s a lot of storytelling to work into it. Emotion is an intrinsic part of that to us. When you have to tell a really complicated story and you want strong emotional moments with the characters, it just requires a certain amount of real estate. This one, in particular, feels like three hours worth of real estate.”
In response to if the film might have an intermission baked into it, Anthony Russo said “We have screened the movie four times for audiences now. For the first three screenings, not a single person got up to go to the bathroom.”
Back in November, at about halfway through the editing process, the Russo Brothers said the film was at around three hours long. It appears that subsequent editing hasn’t diminished the current runtime significantly.
If it remains three hours long for its theatrical release, Endgame will be the longest MCU movie out of the nearly two-dozen MCU films. On average, an MCU film sits at just over two hours long.
The Incredible Hulk and Thor 2: The Dark World are tied for shortest MCU film at 1 hour and 52 minutes long, and Avengers: Infinity War is the longest running at 2 hours and 29 minutes. If Endgame remains at around three hours in length, it could be the longest film in the MCU by over half an hour.
For more on Endgame, read about what Hawkeye’s costume says about the state of the MCU during Endgame and how the recent Super Bowl trailer may have edited a character out.
