Lovers of the eponymous cosmic super-team aren’t ready to let Star-Lord and his gang go in Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which will be the final adventure for these characters. Luckily for them, the threequel is now confirmed to be the biggest of the entire trilogy, meaning we can put off saying goodbye to Groot and company for as long as possible.
This bombshell comes courtesy of the highest, most trustworthy source possible, writer/director James Gunn himself. As the filmmaker let slip while replying to a fan on Instagram, Guardians 3 will definitely be longer than both 2014’s Guardians of the Galaxy and 2017’s Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2.
For context, the first film is 2 hours 2 minutes while the sequel has a runtime of 2 hours 17 minutes. Considering the second’s 15 additional minutes puts it ninth on a ranking of the franchise’s biggest films, that means that Vol. 3 is 100 percent set to be among the longest movies in the entire MCU.
Gunn isn’t quite ready to say just yet exactly what the runtime for the threequel will be, but it could very easily break into the MCU’s top five. If, for instance, the movie continues the pattern of the first and second films and adds another 15 minutes to the length then that would bring it to 2 hours 32 minutes — which would make it the third longest MCU flick ever, behind Eternals and in front of Avengers: Infinity War.
Seeing how confident Gunn is that Vol. 3 will be chunkier than Vol. 2, clearly this isn’t just a case of a couple of minutes difference, so there likely is around at least 10 minutes on it. In other words, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 definitely isn’t going to leave us feeling underfed once it arrives in theaters on May 5.
