Avengers 4 Director Says The Runtime’s Still At 3 Hours

For all the speculation around Avengers 4 and the many details that directors Anthony and Joe Russo refuse to share, it’s easy to forget that even this filmmaking pair don’t know the exact content of the Avengers: Infinity War sequel, with the movie currently in post-production and with some way to go before it arrives at its final form.

In an interview with USA Today, Joe Russo offered a quick update on how the project’s progressing, explaining that the flick still boasts a bulky 3-hour runtime.

“We’re about halfway through the editorial process, and it’s standing at around 3 hours,” Russo revealed. “It’s a very complicated movie with a lot of characters in it. We’re putting in the work, so we’ll see where it ends up. It definitely has a lot of story in it.”

From a commercial standpoint, it’s easy to see why Joe and his brother would be eager to trim their movie down to a more digestible length, though you can bet that there are plenty of fans out there who’d be happy to see this era-closing work stretch out for as long as possible.

Granted, the box office success of such franchise fare as The Lord of the Rings makes the case that audiences are willing to take a chance on blockbusters that approach or even exceed the 3-hour mark, but if the Russos feel like they can fit all the necessary plot into a shorter feature, then it’s a good bet that they will. After all, the fast-paced Avengers: Infinity War managed to keep things just under two-and-a-half hours, despite packing a whole lot of story itself.

As it stands, Avengers 4 looks to be delivering an overwhelming array of familiar faces, including some that we haven’t seen grace our screens in years. Channelling all these MCU inhabitants into a single, coherent story seems like a tall order, but we’ll find out if the Russo Brothers are up to the task when the film hits theaters on May 3rd, 2019.