Avengers 4 Is About Three Hours Long, Says Co-Director Joe Russo
Even for a film franchise which has made a point of creeping past the two-and-a-half-hour mark, the first cut of Avengers 4 is extremely long, according to co-director Joe Russo.
Chatting on Instagram while doing some promo for his new Los Angeles bar, Duello, Russo said: "The running time on Avengers 4 is currently sitting right at three hours. We’ll see if that holds."
As there's a fair way still to go in the edit that's quite likely to change, Russo said. "We’re about halfway through the editing process. We’re really just scratching the surface on our VFX shots," he explained. "There are more than 3,000 VFX shots in the movie; those require a lot of time and thought and energy and effort, and we’re very early in the phase of getting VFX done. We’ve just started work with Alan Silvestri on the score, and we’re still editing picture at this point."
There was precious little in the way of plot pointers, but Russo did drop one of those soundbites which sounds like a tasty morsel but which evaporates as soon as you read it. "Will the stakes be higher in Avengers 4?" Russo asked himself in the time-honoured Hollywood manner. "Absolutely. 100 percent. The highest of any of the films to date, without question."
Quite how much gets trimmed from Avengers 4 is an unknown at the minute, but a three-hour Avengers film would make it the longest of an exceptionally long set of films: Age of Ultron runs to two hours and 21 minutes, The Avengers two hours and 23 minutes, and Infinity War two hours and 29 minutes. The bar, if you were wondering, does "modern drinks with esoteric ingredients and experimental flavor combinations, a tribute to the evolution of the Arts District as a true culinary destination", which sounds fine.
This story originally appeared on Esquire.co.uk. Minor edits have been made by the Esquiremag.ph editors.
