Last week everybody was talking about Grindhouse and why it failed. It was like THE hot topic of conversations amongst douchebags like myself who sit on the sidelines of Hollywood as well as the douchebags who are smack dab in the middle of it all. Many people pointed at the film’s gargantuan running time of three hours plus as being the element that killed Tarantino and Rodriguez’s baby.
Now Slashfilm is reporting that other studios have looked at the mess the Brothers Weinstein have on their hands and cutting their movies to be shorter and easier on America’s dwindling attention span. The case they talk about is Warner Bros demanding that director David Yates – who has already been brought on for the next film, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince – cut the running time of Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix. How long was the film already? The other Potter movies all clock in at two and a half hours or so, and they’ve not been hurting at the box office. Why get shy now? It’s possible that Order of the Phoenix was running exceptionally long, as the book is the longest in the series to date.
Still, if the problem with Grindhouse was the length (and I don’t think that was it – I think the Weinstein’s didn’t sell it right), that should have no bearing on the running time of a bona fide, guaranteed blockbuster. Shit, Return of the King was seventeen hours long and made the most money of all the films.
I’ll call around Warner Bros tomorrow and get no information, but at least I can say I tried.