We’ve been getting a lot of news lately about further additions to the cast of Avengers 4, whether it’s the return of a few familiar faces, or the introduction of brand new MCU inhabitants. These reports are starting to paint a pretty vivid picture of just how crammed with characters the upcoming Avengers: Infinity War sequel could be, and perhaps this is the reason why a certain comment from co-director Joe Russo is starting to get some renewed attention online.
To jog your memory, earlier this year, before the Russo Brothers’ latest feature hit theaters, the filmmaker told Collider that next year’s release could well be passing the three-hour mark:
“I’ll say it could easily be a three hour film, but I think that, you know, we’re very hard on the material. We like it to play at a certain pace. Uh…I…you know, i’m sure that we’ll squeeze it. I can’t imagine..We have a whole year of work left on that movie. I do think it will be longer than Avengers 3, but it’s clearly impossible to say.”
While six months can be a long time for franchise filmmaking, we’ve received no indication that Anthony and Joe Russo will be straying from this plan. If anything, the phenomenal box office success off the 149-minute Infinity War may have served as a confidence-booster for giving an even longer runtime a try.
As daunted as moviegoers might feel at the thought of investing three hours of their time into a single film, you can bet that plenty of fans will relish the extra minutes to soak in the final moments of the MCU’s Phase 3, while giving an extended farewell to a few major Phase 1 players. And given the number of storylines and character arcs that this flick is presumably going to have to juggle, such a hefty runtime might just be a logistical necessity.
From the sound of things, Avengers 4 will almost certainly be the most ambitious MCU offering to date, and we’ll if see the Russo Brothers pull it off when the film comes out on May 3rd, 2019.