There has been a lot of discourse in the last few years regarding ever-growing movie runtimes, specifically regarding major blockbusters. While it used to be that you only tended to see major awards-worthy dramas exceed two hours, it’s perfectly normal today to see your comic book movies at two and a half hours long, if not longer.
All three of director Gareth Edwards' previous major studio releases, Godzilla, Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, and The Creator, exceed two hours in length. So it seems it was something of a goal for Edwards to bring in the upcoming Jurassic World: Rebirth under two hours in length. He tells io9 that he actually sliced five minutes off the movie just to get it under that cutoff, only to have the studio ask him to put it back. He said…
I was determined to do a film that was under two hours. And so we showed this one hour 59 [minute] cut to the studio. And essentially their note was like, ‘Great, could you put the five minutes that you cut out back in?’ And so we put those five minutes back in, and it was essentially the movie.
The official runtime of Jurassic World: Rebirth is listed at two hours and 14 minutes, so it seems likely Edwards’ barely over two-hour cut was sans credits. This means even his version would have crept over two hours in total, but it's still almost surprising the movie was that short. At this point, we basically expect all blockbusters to be longer.
Generally speaking, studio executives are happier when movies are shorter. The shorter a movie is, the more showtimes a theatrical film can have, and thus the more money can be made. That said, five minutes one way or the other probably doesn’t move the needle much, so whatever five minutes got cut out was apparently worthwhile enough that the studio thought the movie was better with it.
It’s unclear exactly which five minutes that Edwards considered removing were saved by the studio. The director reveals there will likely be two or three deleted scenes on the home release of Rebirth that were cut and left out.
The new film is getting a lukewarm response from critics; our own Jurassic World: Rebirth review doesn't find much to love, but the Jurassic Park franchise has never had any trouble making piles of money at the box office, and there’s no reason to believe that’s going to change now. Jurassic World: Dominion had the longest runtime in the franchise at just short of two and a half hours, and it still made a billion dollars. There a pretty good chance the new movie will follow suit, even if it is five minutes longer.
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