We have a few more months to go before Spider-Man: No Way Home hits theaters on December 17, and now that we have seen the first trailer for it (which I’ll include below), the speculation has shifted into a higher gear. Some fans are busy dissecting the suits that are visible in the trailer footage. Others are wondering if Alfred Molina is saying “Hello Peter” to Tobey Maguire, because he wouldn’t recognize Tom Holland’s Peter Parker. That actually makes sense to me. What doesn’t make sense, however, is a new rumor running around that the movie’s run time has been revealed… because Jon Watts hasn’t finished editing it yet.
The rumor has started because a UK theater chain, Cineworld, has posted a page for Spider-Man: No Way Home on its site, and has a running time of 150 minutes listed. That’s bold. And also impossible. How on earth would a theater chain in the UK know the run time of a Spider-Man sequel, and be able to reveal it before Marvel Studios or Sony Pictures gets a chance to? The answer is that they don’t know it, but likely are putting that run time in as a placeholder for when the movie begins to play in theaters in December.
Could Spider-Man: No Way Home be close to two hours and thirty minutes? Sure. That would make so much sense, as Spider-Man: Homecoming ran for 133 minutes, and its sequel, Spider-Man: Far From Home, clocked in at 129 minutes. On paper, there should be a lot more story to tell in Spider-Man: No Way Home, especially if it dives as deeply into the multiverse and the presence of Doctor Octopus (Molina) and Norman Osborn (Willem Dafoe) and possibly way more previous Spider-Man films. Include the presence of Doctor Strange (Benedict Cumberbatch), the identity crisis facing Peter Parker (Holland) following Far From Home, and the possible cameos of Tobey Maguire and Andrew Garfield, and I actually think 150 minutes is too few.
But there is far too much time between now and when the movie comes out that there is no possible way Cineworld can know that the movie is 150 minutes. Production wrapped in March of this past year. Post-production on a sequel of this size can last a year, so even on an advanced schedule, a rough cut would basically be in the hands of the director and the production team by this point, but in no way would a theater chain know for certain the run time of a finished product.
There have been so many pre-release rumors swirling around Spider-Man: No Way Home, with many of them attached to movie theater chains. The bulk of them were related to the trailer, with so many managers and projectionists claiming to have seen the trailer -- falsely. This run time likely is false, as well. Or, at least, it’s a premature guess at what the feature could be, based on the times of the previous two. But in now way should you start planning your date night around Spider-Man: No Way Home being 150 minutes, because right now, that’s nothing more than an educated guess, and not something that can be “reported” by Cineworld UK -- with all due respect to them.
So, sit back. Get patient. Wait for a second trailer for Spider-Man: No Way Home, while Jon Watts continues to toil away on his cut. And if you need a fix of Marvel Cinematic Universe, you have Destin Daniel Cretton’s origin film Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings arriving in theaters on September 3, so grab your tickets.
