I Knew It Wasn't Just Me

From The Wall Street Journal

HOLLYWOOD REPORT
The Endless Summer Movie

Overlong Films Test Patience,
Cut Theater Owners' Sales;
How Directors Get Their Way
By KATE KELLY
July 21, 2006; Page W1

Checking your watch is becoming as much a part of the moviegoing experience as popcorn and soda.

Two hours once was the unofficial time limit for most Hollywood films, and about 90 minutes for movies aimed at seat-squirming children. But across the board, many of this year's most-anticipated pictures blow past these caps.

Walt Disney Co.'s "Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest," the second installment of its wildly popular Johnny Depp franchise, clocks in at two hours and 30 minutes. It takes two hours and 29 minutes for Sony Corp. to crack "The Da Vinci Code." Disney's animated "Cars" hits the finish line at 1:56, far longer than most kiddie fare. And Clark Kent's alter ego flies around for two hours and 34 minutes in Warner Bros.' "Superman Returns."

Posting a review on the movie Web site imdb.com, a "Superman Returns" patron griped that a Space Shuttle rescue scene "seemed to be taking forever, so I wandered around the theater, met a girl, got married, raised a son and sent him off to college."

Next week, Universal Pictures tests the waters with the opening of its $135 million crime drama "Miami Vice," which at 132 minutes exceeds the two-hour mark. But even to get to that length entailed a rare compromise with a big-name director. Originally, the film came in at roughly 140 minutes, a running time that some Universal insiders thought was too long. After discussions, director Michael Mann agreed to cut about eight minutes from the movie, which is based on the 1980s TV show he created.

Audiences, studio executives and theater owners all are unhappy with overlong films. The longer the running time, the more it costs to make a film, generally speaking -- so the extreme length of a movie can both bump up its cost and depress revenue by turning off some customers. And since theaters can schedule only so many movies a day, those that run 2½ hours can't be shown nearly as often as shorter films, reducing potential ticket and concession sales.

"Clearly, nirvana for us is a great 75-to-80-minute, animated feature, because you can add extra show times," says Scott Wallace, chairman and chief executive of Hollywood/Wallace Theaters, a chain based in Portland, Ore. "It's all about turnover -- so you can sell another group of people popcorn."

Not all moviegoers are turned off by long films. Millions of fans were entranced by the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy, whose combined running time was nearly nine hours. (The shortest was "Fellowship of the Ring" at 2:58.) And the current "Pirates" sequel set an all-time record with its $136 million in opening-weekend ticket sales.

But Edwin Morales and his date, Marcella Lentz-Pope, contemplated leaving a Pasadena, Calif., theater to stretch their legs midway through a "Pirates" screening this week. "They might have well made two movies out of it," Ms. Lentz-Pope says. "It was just too much."

The average length of a Hollywood film has been on a steady upward creep. In 1986, the year of blockbusters like the Tom Cruise fighter-pilot drama "Top Gun," the Oliver Stone-directed Vietnam War story "Platoon" and the fourth installment of the "Star Trek" movie franchise, the average running time of the 20 most successful releases was 104 minutes, according Exhibitor Relations Co., a research firm that provides statistics about the movie industry. But by last year -- which included such epics as "Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire," "Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith" and "King Kong" -- the figure was 118 minutes.

By the end of a screening of a recent showing of "Superman Returns," Phyllis Henry really did believe a man could fly -- very, very slowly. She says she loved the special effects, but got bogged down in the superhero's on-again, off-again romance with Lois Lane. "There was way too much love story," the Riverside, Calif., schoolteacher says. "We don't want to sit through 80 minutes of character development to get to the action part."

Most of the blame for the movie marathons lies with studios' inability to rein in the growing clout of a select group of directors. With box-office returns increasingly unpredictable, studios try to hire the most proven filmmakers. But those directors tend to come with strings attached, including eight-figure salaries and plenty of autonomy over how a movie is made -- including running times.

A case in point: Peter Jackson's directing deal for "King Kong." On the heels of his smashing success with the first two "Lord of the Rings" movies, each of which made well over $300 million domestically despite their length, the New Zealand filmmaker had a negotiating advantage when it came to discussing a "Kong" deal in 2003. So to realize his vision of the classic gorilla movie -- a project that Universal had already shelved once -- Mr. Jackson commanded a $20 million payment up front, a 20% share of the studio's share of the box-office gross and the right to "final-cut approval," or complete say, over a PG-13-rated movie of roughly 2½ hours, according to people familiar with the deal.

But even when the rough cut exceeded three hours, Universal executives, feeling it was important to trust Mr. Jackson, didn't push back much, suggesting among other things a cut of less than one minute from a scene. The eventual result: a tepid $218 million in domestic ticket sales against roughly $250 million in production costs. "King Kong" and its 187-minute running time strained many moviegoers' patience -- prompting some to walk out early and others to gripe that it took more than an hour for the title character to appear. Many avoided the film entirely.

"Some of this is just the power that directors wield today," says Paul Dergarabedian, president of Exhibitor Relations. "As directors have final-cut approval over the movie, I think we have seen some of the running times get bloated."

Trimming 'Superman'

Alan Horn, president of Warner Bros., says studio executives are aware of the need to trim movie lengths. "We do it in almost every movie," he says, adding that eliminating anywhere from 15 to 30 minutes from a director's rough cut "is not at all uncommon."

Still, he believes the bigger issue is a movie's pace. Although his studio's "Superman Returns" was cut "tons" -- a scene in which the superhero comes across the ruins of his home planet was removed entirely by director Bryan Singer -- Mr. Horn adds that "I myself did not see a pacing issue" with the movie. Mr. Singer had a final-cut approval clause in his contract that was tied to the $209 million film's rating, budget and length. A representative for Mr. Singer declined to comment.

Increasingly, though, epic length doesn't equal epic success. "Superman Returns" disappointed Warner's expectations with its $53 million first weekend, and may struggle to reach $200 million in U.S. ticket sales. Last year's two-hour, 25-minute "Kingdom of Heaven" fell hard, with the $130 million Ridley Scott epic about the Crusades generating just $47 million in domestic ticket sales.

The next test of movie length is "Miami Vice," due in theaters next Friday. "Vice" is a major gamble for Universal, which typically releases just one such megabudget movie in a year. Starring Jamie Foxx and Colin Farrell as undercover cops, the film sailed past its original $120 million budget when a combination of bad weather, cast illness and other costs befell the production. But the studio held the line at about $135 million in production spending, and has thrown a sleek marketing campaign behind the film.

As Mr. Mann, the director, tinkered with the final version of "Vice" over the last month or so and test audiences screened the movie, it became clear that some parts should be trimmed to keep the pace brisk, say people familiar with his thinking. One key element of the eight or so minutes that have been cut: a scene at the beginning in which Messrs. Foxx and Farrell zip across the water in a speedboat chase. Initially planned as a lengthy opening-credit montage, the credits were moved to the film's end. To throw moviegoers right into the action, these people add, the new opening places the stars in a nightclub scene, where the plot unfolds immediately. A representative for Universal said Mr. Mann declined to comment.

Mr. Mann has a long history of long movies. His last four pictures -- "Collateral," "Ali," "The Insider" and "Heat" -- averaged about two hours and 32 minutes each. Their average box-office take: a disappointing $64 million. But the most successful of those -- 2004's "Collateral," with domestic ticket sales of a little more than $100 million -- was also the shortest. So by whittling "Miami Vice" down to 2:12 -- or 2:04 without the lengthy credit sequence at the end -- it may hit the director's sweet spot with audiences.

---- Nick Timiraos contributed to this article.

Write to Kate Kelly at kate.kelly@wsj.com