How long will I be in the theater?

With recent movies such as Avengers: Endgame and Avatar: The Way of Water with durations of over 3 hours, it seems that movies are getting longer and longer. But is this truly the case? And is this for movies of the entire industry?

We compared runtimes across some of the largest industries across the different decades and did not find any significant differences in movie durations over time. But we have one exception: India. Indian movies are significantly longer than movies from any other industries, which all seem to have pretty standard lengths. Averaging at around 2.5 hours, you better not drink too much before going into the theater to watch an Indian movie.

But rest assured, Indian movie durations seem to reduce over time, and perhaps durations will converge to similar times across all industries.