Avengers: Infinity War Runtime Teased

Avengers: Infinity War co-director Joe Russo discusses the film's current runtime and what it means for the movie as a whole. With San Diego Comic-Con in the rearview, Marvel fans are still trying to process all of the reveals. While much of what was shown to fans at the convention has yet to appear online, a lot of insight into the MCU was unveiled. That includes new information regarding next year's big team-up. While we're still waiting the release of the Infinity War teaser that was shown, we've been treated to plenty of other surprises.

One of the most exciting things to come out of the weekend was the slow reveal of a poster featuring all the heroes and villains from Infinity War. Released in pieces, the full image was finally showcased yesterday, pulling together almost two dozen heroes and spotlighting Thanos and his minions. Of course, with so many characters coming together, one of the big questions about Infinity War is how long it will be. And though the final cut hasn't been made, we have a good idea of what it will clock in at.

Collider spoke with Avengers: Infinity War co-director Joe Russo about the length of the film so far. While he admitted that there was still plenty of work to be done, he did reveal that the film is close to the final product.

Joe Russo directing Captain America Civil War

“The current cut is over two and a half [hours]… Most of it’s a movie you could show, but there’s still a lot of work left to be done, I still have a couple of scenes that we haven’t finished from Avengers 3 that I’m shooting in the next few months with my brother, and it’s certainly gonna be a film that lives in the two and a half hour, two and a half hour-plus range.”

Given the length of previous Marvel films— the previous Avengers films and Captain America: Civil War all sit in the 2h 20m range—it's hardly surprising that the movie will hit the two and a half hour mark. In the end, we could even see a film pushing close to three hours. Russo admits that additional filming is still scheduled, which could include some rumored Captain Marvel scenes. When all is said and done, we could be seeing the longest Marvel film to date. Given how much Infinity War is tasked with doing, however, its length only makes sense.

“We have to, I mean it’s a culmination event. We’ve gotta take 10 years of storytelling in this Marvel narrative experiment that’s been going on since Iron Man, and we have to take all these disparate tones, disparate themes, motivations, and we have to pull them together in a unified narrative and write the final chapters of the book. There’s no way you could do that with all these characters in under that running length.”

Building off of 18 previous films, Russo's certainly right that a lot of backstory will go into Infinity War. On top of that, the film will need to reconcile a dozen different tones and provide adequate stories for more than 30 characters. It's for that reason that Avengers 4 will more than likely be a continuation of Avengers: Infinity War, despite reports to the contrary.