Are movies getting longer?

3/1/22 7:00PM

We love a good Batman movie, but even we were taken aback by the nearly 3-hour runtime of upcoming release The Batman — which got us wondering: are movies getting longer?

The evidence, a review

The truth is that long movies, like Titanic at 3 hrs 14 mins or the final Lord of the Rings movie which is a whopping 3 hrs 21 mins, are nothing new. Indeed, a great study of 27,000+ movies on Towards Data Science from 2018 found limited evidence that movies on average had gotten longer in the last 20 years, confirming another independent study from 2014.

But what about just the really popular movies, the blockbusters that we all want to see?

The top 10

We got the data on the running times of the 10 most popular movies at the US box office for each year from 1995-2021 (source: The Numbers).

Last year the average length of a top 10 movie was 131 minutes, which was the highest in our dataset (but not by much). If you zoom out and look at a slightly longer time frame, like the last 5 years, the average length was 126 minutes. Again, that is the longest average for any 5-year period since 1995... but only by a few minutes.

So yeah, popular movies are getting longer — but only just.

Hyunsoo Rim

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JetBlue is raising its bag fees as fuel costs squeeze airlines

JetBlue will reportedly hike its bag fees, as the cost of jet fuel continues to climb amid the war in Iran. It’s the latest example of carriers finding ways to push rising costs onto travelers.

Last week, United Airlines CEO Scott Kirby said that if fuel prices remain elevated, fares would need to rise another 20% for his airline to break even this year.

As CNBC reported, when one airline raises fees, others tend to follow.

Earlier this month, JetBlue hiked its first-quarter outlook for operating revenue per seat mile to between 5% and 7%, saying that strong Q1 demand helped “partially offset additional expenses realized from operational disruptions and rising fuel costs.” Now, the carrier appears to be making moves to further boost revenue to offset those costs.

Earlier on Monday, JetBlue rival Alaska Air lowered its Q1 profit forecast. The refining margins for the carrier’s cheapest fuel option — sourced from Singapore and representing about 20% of Alaska’s overall supply — have spiked 400% since February.

JetBlue did not immediately respond to a request for comment.