Filmmakers Phil Lord and Chris Miller have revealed that their sci-fi feature “Project Hail Mary,” currently topping the box-office, ran much longer than its current version at one point.
While the film has been widely praised, one of the few common criticisms is that it runs long at around 156 minutes, with the pacing lagging at times.
Appearing on the Happy Sad Confused podcast, Lord and Miller revealed they initially screened a 225-minute cut of the film to a group of director friends, and it turned into a rough experience according to Miller:
“Our first official test screening went great, but we do a lot of earlier screenings for friends and family and other filmmakers and writers. This movie was massive. When we finally got the assembly cut down to under four hours long, we subjected some filmmaker friends of ours to a three-hour and 45-minute cut of the movie, which was embarrassing.”
Lord noted that the feedback was unanimous that the pair needed to “get it way shorter.” He adds:
“You just don’t know how the scenes are going to land with an audience. We thought everything was charming, but some of those charming things didn’t land. It made it really easy to get it down to three hours. Then we had to slowly, slowly work our way down to 2.5 hours.”
Even so, it’s one of the longer major releases of the past twelve months alongside “Avatar: Fire and Ash” at 195 minutes, “Mission: Impossible — The Final Reckoning” at 170 minutes and “One Battle After Another” at 162 minutes.
Audiences don’t seem to mind though, with the film expected to see a relatively small drop in its second weekend this weekend.
