Just a month ago, according to producer Kathleen Kennedy, “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” had a runtime of 142 minutes.
It seems as though 10 additional minutes were added to the runtime, possibly credits. It is now officially listed as 153 minutes. The film cost more than $300 million to produce.
This makes it the longest Indiana Jones film ever. The former champ was 1989’s “The Last Crusade” at 128 minutes.
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:
I will say that the early movies were shorter. They were under two hours and 15 minutes. And we talked about that quite a bit… But as you know, with runtime, it’s all about how you feel, right? So, if you’re sitting in a movie, and it feels long… The reason this is interesting is because long-form storytelling is something that we like in the streaming space. So, I think it might be that it’s some kind of carry over from that. But God knows, this year there were so many three hour-plus movies that I felt I wasn’t getting any work done, trying to see them!”
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.
Cannes-wise, we already know that Martin Scorsese’s “Killers of the Flower Moon” is 206 minutes, Steve McQueen’s “Occupied City” is 266 minutes, Wang Bing’s “Youth” is 212 minutes, and Justine Triet’s “Anatomy of a Fall” 150 minutes.