TOKYO — Around the world, movies are getting longer, with a quarter of the top 30 box office films of 2023 surpassing two and a half hours, according to the U.S. website Box Office Mojo, and flying in the face of a consumer trend of efficiently parceling out one’s free time.
The average movie runtime in 2023 was 132 minutes, up 13 minutes from a decade earlier. For years, movie studios had kept runtimes around two hours so theaters could pack as many screenings into a day as possible. However, this approach is shifting with the rise of online streaming for new releases.
