Well, consider me shocked.
Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is NOT 3 hours 20 minutes. It’s also NOT 3 hours 45 Minutes …
No, it’s 234 minutes! That’s 3 hours 54 minutes.
That’s pretty close to what Fremaux hinted at, that it’s just a few minutes shy of Sergio Leone’s “Once Upon A Time in America,” which ran for over 4 hours.
I’m guessing that when ‘Killers’ screens at Cannes it’ll be a day almost solely dedicated to Scorsese’s epic, you won’t have too many other films from the official selection screening that day.
If people were complaining about the duration of “The Irishman” then watch out … His last three films were all epic in length: “Silence” (161 minutes), “The Wolf of Wall Street” (180 minutes) and “The Irishman” (210 minutes). Scorsese’s taking it to a whole other level with this one.
Of course, I’m not bothered. Length is second fiddle to quality. As Roger Ebert once said “No good movie is too long, and no bad movie is short enough.”
Other lengthy Cannes runtimes this year include Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City” (240 minutes), Wang Bing’s “Youth” (210 minutes), Nuri Bilge Ceylan’s “About Dry Grasses” (197 minutes), Justin Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” (150 minutes), and ‘Indy 5’ (142 minutes).
UPDATED: While the exact length of the film has yet to be confirmed, The Movie Database has also listed the movie's theatrical runtime as 3 hours and 54 minutes.
Additionally, in an interview with Variety, Cannes Film Festival's director Thierry Fremaux was asked about the movie's runtime. He stated he had seen a runtime that was five minutes longer than Once Upon a Time in America (if the extended cut, 4 hours and 11 minutes).
Still no distributor for "Bucking Fastard," "Alpha Gang," "The Last Photograph," "Closing Night," and "The Life and Deaths of Wilson Shedd." The issue seems to be quality more than a lack of willingness to buy.