Avengers: Infinity War is the biggest Marvel movie ever, so it’s no surprise that it will be the longest entry in the MCU yet. While that’s not in doubt, there have been various reports about exactly how long it’ll be. A while back, for instance, it was believed that Infinity War would clock in at an enormous 3 hours, but recently it was much more plausibly stated as having a 156 minute runtime.
The latest evidence, though, suggests that even this was an over-estimate. The Irish Film Classification Office’s listing for the team-up extravaganza puts the film’s length at precisely 149 minutes and 9 seconds. That’s just a shade under 2 and a half hours. While shorter than initial reports, that still makes it the lengthiest entry in the franchise to date, though it’s only two minutes longer than Captain America: Civil War.
It’s possible that, since the previous estimate came in, the Russo brothers have chipped away at their magnum opus a little more, whittling it down by those 7 minutes. As past MCU movies have shown, Marvel Studios aren’t big on extended editions of their productions as they prefer to simply create one ultimate cut that’s as good as possible. Thankfully for fans, after what’s now a decade of the franchise, Marvel’s filmmakers have got pretty darn good at that, so we have faith that the Russos have created as tight and fast-moving – yet also coherent and story-driven – a movie as they could.
Part of the mystery surrounding the runtime here also comes from the fact that so few people have actually seen Infinity War in its entirety. For instance, instead of the usual premiere tour, only the first 20 minutes of the film are being shown at special sneak peak screenings across the globe.
There will still be a proper premiere, of course, but it won’t be until April 23rd in Los Angeles, at which point we’ll have a much better idea of what awaits us when Avengers: Infinity War hits theaters just a few short days later, on April 27th.