Jake Coyle

October 26, 2026 — 5:00am

Your bladder isn’t lying. Movies are getting longer.

All kinds of films, from big-budget spectacles to art house dramas, are stretching their run times. It’s an old saying that a short movie can feel long and a long movie can feel short. But data, not just bathroom runs, shows that run time inflation is real at the movies.

Matt Damon as Odysseus in Christopher Nolan’s The Odyssey. Melinda Sue Gordon

After analysing 36,431 movies released theatrically from 1980 to 2025, researcher Stephen Follows found that the average length of a wide-release movie has grown from 106 to 114 minutes.

For most who frequent the movie theatre, this isn’t surprising. It’s become a regular feature of the prerelease anticipation of a movie: How long is it?…