‘Avengers: Infinity War’ Co-Director Discusses The Film’s Runtime

Avengers: Infinity War will finally pit Earth’s Mightiest Heroes against the ruthless Thanos after the Mad Titan was introduced to audiences five years ago. In an interview with Collider, co-director Joe Russo discussed the upcoming film’s runtime and why the next Avengers film will require a considerable running length.

Russo revealed that the film will likely end up being roughly two-and-half hours at least:

“The current cut is over two and a half [hours]… Most of it’s a movie you could show, but there’s still a lot of work left to be done, I still have a couple of scenes that we haven’t finished from Avengers 3 that I’m shooting in the next few months with my brother, and it’s certainly gonna be a film that lives in the two and a half hour, two and a half hour-plus range.”

Russo explained why the film will require such a lengthy runtime:

“We have to, I mean it’s a culmination event. We’ve gotta take 10 years of storytelling in this Marvel narrative experiment that’s been going on since Iron Man, and we have to take all these disparate tones, disparate themes, motivations, and we have to pull them together in a unified narrative and write the final chapters of the book. There’s no way you could do that with all these characters in under that running length.”

While Russo could not offer a definitive running length for the fourth Avengers film, the filmmaker did tell fans to expect a similar runtime:

“It’s hard to say because we haven’t shot it yet, but I think again because these are complex movies with a lot of characters, it’s hard to imagine—now look at me I’ll look like an idiot in a couple of months when it’s two hours and twenty minutes, but it’s hard to imagine these movies being short films.”

At 2 hours and 27 minutes, Captain America: Civil War currently holds the title of longest MCU film. If Russo’s estimation proves to be correct, Avengers: Infinity War would hold that title and with the number of characters set to appear in the film, one can imagine that would be welcomed news to most fans.

Directed by Joe and Anthony Russo, Avengers: Infinity War stars Robert Downey Jr., Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Mark Ruffalo, Scarlett Johansson, Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Paul Bettany, Chris Pratt, Zoe Saldana, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Vin Diesel, Pom Klementieff, Karen Gillan, Sean Gunn, Benedict Cumberbatch, Tom Holland, Sebastian Stan, Chadwick Boseman, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Benedict Wong, Tom Hiddleston, Tessa Thompson, Benicio Del Toro, Danai Gurira and Josh Brolin.

Avengers: Infinity War will be released in theaters on May 4, 2018.

Source: Collider