The last we heard, director Martin Scorsese had to trim down his upcoming feature, The Wolf of Wall Street, to make it under 3 hours. Apparently, Paramount thought that the film was too long and asked the director to cut some scenes. He complied with their request and shortened it down to 2 hours and 45 minutes.
Today though, we’re hearing from Allocine that some additional footage has been thrown back in and the film will now run 2 hours and 59 minutes, making it the director’s longest feature to date. Not by much though. Casino came in at just one minute shorter (2 hours and 58 minutes) and The Aviator had a runtime of 2 hours and 50 minutes.
While 3 hours may seem like a long time, this news is music to my ears. I’ve been highly anticipating The Wolf of Wall Street for a while now (having loved the book that it’s based on) and more Scorsese can never be a bad thing, especially when he’s directing a cast that includes Leonardo DiCaprio, Jonah Hill, Matthew McConaughey and Jean Dujardin, among others.
Plus, there’s so much great material in the book that even at 3 hours I’m sure some of it will have to be left out. I say the longer this movie is, the better. Given the subject matter of the source material, there is no way that the film will turn out to be too long or drawn out. The book could have gone on for another 500 pages and I would have still been completely hooked the whole way through.
So yeah, if you can’t already tell, I’m extremely excited for this one, and you should be too.
The Wolf of Wall Street will hit theatres on Christmas Day. Tell us, are you ready for a 3-hour Martin Scorsese film? Let us know in the comments section below.