Man of Steel is two hours and 23 minutes long. Batman v. Superman: Dawn Of Justice is two hours and 31 minutes with an extended, Ultimate Edition cut that is a whopping three hours and three minutes. Even shorter DC movies like Suicide Squad and Wonder Woman run over two hours in length, to varying degrees of success. So, when Justice League was coming together over at DC and Warner Bros., the studios felt as if they had learned something about length as more and more DC movies got made. As a result, Justice League will be the first in this new amalgamation of DC films to be under two hours.
In fact, however, it's just barely under two hours. The movie reportedly clocks in at one hour and 59 minutes, aka 119 minutes. So, it's not exactly a breezy hour-and-a-half-long movie. Still presumably it shouldn't drag on like some lengthier films are known to do, either. According to a new report over at the Wall Street Journal, the film definitely could have been longer, but Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara was the person who reportedly pushed the movie to be under two hours.
While I am a fan of 90 minute movies, I don't always feel that a movie that does span two hours is too long. However, if we are just looking strictly at DC movies, I will say that Wonder Woman, at 141 minutes, felt a whole lot shorter than Batman v Superman, at 151 minutes--even though that's only a 10-minute difference. So, presumably the theory is that the shorter you go, the tighter a movie can be. And since Justice League chose to go even shorter, perhaps it will be the zippy and fun movie the recent ads have been touting it as.
The move comes as part of an overhaul of Justice League that started earlier in the movie's development. Writer Geoff Johns and production executive Jon Berg were signed on to give the movie a more optimistic tone, pitting it closer to Wonder Woman than some of the previous DC movies we've seen. Later, Joss Whedon also came onboard to finish the movie and film a few reshoots after Zack Snyder stepped down. Snyder left the movie to take some personal time after his daughter committed suicide.
Obviously, we don't have too much longer to wait to find out. Justice League officially hits theaters on November 17. With its 119-minute runtime, it will be competing with the likes of Thor: Ragnarok, which runs 130 minutes (but was initially conceived as being shorter), and Coco, which runs 109 minutes. To get a feel for all of the movies that will be out around the holidays, take a look at our full schedule or pre-order tickets for Justice League now.
