According to producer Kathleen Kennedy, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” has a runtime of 142 minutes.
This makes it the longest Indiana Jones film ever. The former champ was 1989’s “The Last Crusade” at 128 minutes. Then again, I would bet the end credits are much longer for this latest instalment of the franchise, which cost more than $300 million to produce.
Defending the runtime of ‘Dial of Destiny’, Kennedy insisted that audiences are now getting used to longer movies thanks to our era of binge streaming:
“We’re not dealing with a long movie, which may be the first thing that pops into moviegoers’ heads. At the same time, a case could be made that pop culture fans are getting used to being in front of the screen for stretches. The reason this is interesting is because longform storytelling is becoming something that we like in the streaming space. I think it might be that it’s some kind of carryover from that.”
She’s not wrong.
Mainstream movies are getting longer, and binge-watching seems to be the doorway for a movie studio to test the patience of its audience — look no further than “John Wick: Chapter 4” (169 minutes), “Oppenheimer” (180 minutes), Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 (159 minutes), “Avatar: The Way of Water” (192 minutes) and “Babylon” (188 minutes).
This coming July’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning’ also had a 3+ hour rough cut test-screened, although Paramount’s CEO has expressed a desire to have a slightly shorter version released in theaters.
We also already know that Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” will probably be the longest big studio movie of the year when it gets released in October.