Avengers: Infinity War Runtime

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Avengers: Infinity War Might be Longest MCU Film Yet, Says Director

By Brandon Staley

Published Jul 25, 2017

One of the Avengers: Infinity War directors theorizes that the upcoming film will run long, just like its sequel.

Movies have slowly been creeping up in runtime. Whether that be the result of the expanded universe trend or a greater emphasis on directorial control in Hollywood remains to be seen, but it sounds like one of next year’s biggest summer blockbuster events, Avengers: Infinity War, is keeping with the trend.

According to an interview with Collider, Joe Russo, one half of the film’s directorial team, claims that the upcoming Infinity War might be the longest Marvel film ever produced.

“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 said there’s a legitimate reason for the movie running so long, which is that the film, which will likely pit the Mad Titan Thanos against Marvel’s greatest superheroes, is the culmination of a decade of storytelling. Infinity War releases next year, which will mark the ten-year anniversary of the Marvel Cinematic Universe, or a decade since the release of Iron Man.

Russo also offered an estimate about the fourth Avengers film, which will act as a direct sequel to Infinity War, and theorized that the film will be similarly lengthy, likely placing the combined runtime of the two movies at five hours.

“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,” Russo said.

Debuting in theaters on May 4, 2018, Avengers: Infinity War is a production of Marvel Studios directed by Joe and Anthony Russo starring Robert Downey Jr., Josh Brolin, Mark Ruffalo, Tom Hiddleston, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Jeremy Renner, Chris Pratt, Elizabeth Olsen, Sebastian Stan, Benedict Cumberbatch, Paul Bettany, Samuel L. Jackson, Cobie Smulders, Benedict Wong, Zoe Saldana, Karen Gillan, Vin Diesel, Dave Bautista, Bradley Cooper, Pom Klementieff, Scarlett Johansson, Benicio del Toro, Tom Holland, Anthony Mackie, Chadwick Boseman, Danai Gurira, Paul Rudd and Don Cheadle.