[Advanced] Movies Taking Their Sweet Time (2)

6:45
Ted Mundorff, chief executive of the 229-screen Landmark Theatres, said that when movies exceed a little more than two hours, exhibitors lose a showtime a day — at a cost of about $3,600 per theater per night. With an average-length movie, Mundorff can book about five showings a day, with two in the sweet spot between 7 and 9:30 p.m., when theaters generate about 80% of their business. But movies like "The Hobbit" can be shown only four times a day, with one prime-time screening.

14:00 Going digital 
Traditionally Hollywood's longest movies were historical epics such as "Gone With the Wind" and "Lawrence of Arabia," and running time was synonymous with prestige. But now even genre films have grown longer, according to Jan-Christopher Horak, director of UCLA's Film & Television Archive.

When filmmakers used real film, directors shot roughly 40 minutes of footage for one minute of screen time, Horak said. Now shooting ratios are closer to 200 to 400 minutes shot for every one minute on screen, because crews are no longer concerned about wasting costly film stock.

"There's a kind of overkill at work here," Horak said. "Film directors have this mistaken notion that digital is free, so they shoot a lot more footage. And they're in love with what they shoot."

Many of this year's longer movies come from filmmakers who have racked up enough clout with their studios to win the running-time fight, like "This Is 40" director-producer Judd Apatow, whose comedies "Bridesmaids," "Knocked Up" and "The 40-Year-Old Virgin" were box-office hits for Universal Pictures.But, at almost an hour longer than most comedies, "This Is 40" has inspired some in Hollywood to refer to the movie as "This Is 40 Minutes Too Long."

"It's hard to get out of the house to go the movies," Apatow said of his movie's long running time. "Movies are expensive, parking is expensive — why is everyone in a rush to go home? An extra 15 minutes won't kill you. Everyone thinks everything is like a two-minute YouTube video. And I refuse to adjust for them."


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