UPDATE: It’s official, “One Battle After Another” has received an R Rating for "Pervasive Language, Violence, Sexual Content, and Drug Use"
EARLIER: Boston’s Coolidge Corner Theater lists the runtime at 2 hours and 41 minutes, which aligns with my earlier information. It’s worth noting that only about 10 to 15 minutes have been trimmed since the initial test screening back in the spring.
EARLIER: An internal Warner Bros. PR document, dated from mid-July, has Paul Thomas Anderson’s “One Battle After Another” having a runtime of 160 minutes.
Anderson is known for making deliberately paced, character-driven films, and several of his films run well past the two-hour mark. However, if the runtime sticks, “One Battle After Another” would be the second longest film of his career, 28 minutes behind “Magnolia” which was 188 minutes.
In fact, ‘One Battle’ would longer than such PTA epics as “There Will Be Blood” (158 minutes), “Boogie Nights” (155 minutes), and “The Master” (144 Minutes).
‘One Battle,’ by all accounts, is done post-production, and will likely be MPA rated in the coming weeks, or even days. Will it be rated R? PTA has directed nine films in his career, all of then Rated R. People who have seen it tell me there’s no way around it.