‘The Batman’ Shares One Trait With The Biggest Box Office Blockbusters Of All Time

We found out yesterday that Matt Reeves’ The Batman will run 175 minutes (that’s a lot of Riddler Trophies) when it opens on March 4. That’s the second-longest theatrical superhero movie ever, behind only the 181-minute Avengers: Endgame. I am reminded that WB insisted (under a different regime, natch) that the theatrical cut of Justice League run no longer than two hours. How much mutually assured destruction might have been avoided with even a 145-minute compromise? Nonetheless, the willingness of Warner Bros. to let Matt Reeves’ theatrical cut of The Batman hang all the way out plays into a filmmaker-friendly narrative and represents a calculated bet. Many of the biggest movies of all time are longer than “the norm.” However, will Covid variables and a shorter theatrical window make folks less willing to show up for an exceptionally long Robert Pattinson-starring Batman adventure? 

From Wonder Woman 1984 (151 minutes in late 2020) to Spider-Man: No Way Home (148 minutes in late 2021), the big movies have been big in the most conventional sense of the word. Ridley Scott released two 2.5-hour epics (The Last Duel and House of Gucci) while No Time to Die ran 163 minutes as Marvel’s Eternals clocked in at 157 minutes. F9 (145 minutes) was the longest film in the Fast Saga while even Disney’s Cruella ran 134 minutes. Ghostbusters: Afterlife was the first installment to top 120 minutes. Space Jam: A New Legacy ran 27 minutes longer than the original 88-minute release, while Dune took 155 minutes to tell just the first half of Frank Hubert’s epic novel. A Quiet Place part II and Venom: Let There Be Carnage both stood out by (and arguably benefited from) running a tight 97 minutes.  

One might make the case that the emergence of streaming as a high priority in terms of entertainment consumption has coincided with the slew of long blockbusters (or would-be blockbusters) over the last year. First, audiences are clearly willing to sit through exceedingly long at-home entertainments in terms of binging a season of a Netflix show over a single weekend. If studios expect lots of folks to watch these big movies for the first time not in theaters but at home (where audiences won’t be daunted by a runtime), then that might explain why we’re getting what I’d once argue were the extended director’s cuts not on home video but in theaters. During the DVD boom, The Batman might have run 135 minutes theatrically with a long three-hour cut with more character beats and story details offered up as a post-theatrical incentive.  

However, while a 175-minute movie will have fewer show times per day than a 120-minute movie, that’s less of an issue in the multiplex era (since the mid-90’s) where a surefire biggie will run on multiple screens throughout the day. While fewer showings stereotypically means fewer concessions sold, I’m certainly more likely to splurge on concessions for the 175-minute The Batman versus the 76-minute Batman: Mask of the Phantasm. Moreover, many of the biggest-grossing movies of all time have been among the longest recent theatrical releases. Of the 40 live-action movies that have earned at least $977 million, from Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part I to Avatar, the average running time is around 144 minutes. If you remove the Disney live-action fairy tales and the two entries (Jurassic Park and Phantom Menace) that needed a 3-D reissue, the average rises to 148 minutes. 

Looking at the biggest live-action movies, think Titanic, Avatar, the Harry Potter films, the Lord of the Rings movies, the later Avengers films, Chris Nolan’s epics and (in their day) The Godfather, Gone with the Wind, The Ten Commandments and Ben Hur, the only real connective tissue is that they are all longer than “the norm.” Does that mean correlation = causation? Not necessarily, although it means that, at least sans-Covid variables, potentially excessive runtimes are barely an obstacle for films which audiences absolutely want to see. Yes, a potentially excessive runtime can be a deal breaker for those on the fence, especially if reviews are mixed or the film isn’t seen as a must-see, but audiences who wanted to see The Batman when they thought it might run 140 minutes will still want to see it now that it runs 175 minutes.  

That The Batman is the latest exceptionally long would-be blockbuster is a sign of wanting to make theatrical movies to appear even more of an event compared to streaming options while knowing that the runtime will be even less of an issue on those streaming platforms. WB even gets an easy “filmmaker-friendly” win. The success of Spider-Man: No Way Home, Scream and Sing 2 negates concerns about pandemic-era tentpole moviegoing. The 2.5-hour No Way Home nearing $1.65 billion negates most “too long to sit in a theater amid Covid” concerns. Hell, even if The Batman, starring Zoe Kravitz, Paul Dano, Andy Serkis, Jeffrey Wright and Colin Farrell, underwhelms theatrically (with the important note that $1 billion isn’t anywhere near the bar for success), WB can always dice it up into seven 25 minute “episodes” and pitch it as the latest HBO Max binge obsession.