Warner Bros. Ordered 2 Hour Running Time For ‘Justice League’

Next week, Warner Bros. and DC Films will brace themselves for the reception to “Justice League.” The film carries a hefty pricetag — $300 million, thanks to extensive reshoots — and significant responsibility in the DC Extended Universe. It’s essentially their “The Avengers,” and the first opportunity that audiences will get to see all these superheroes together, and hopefully like them enough to line up for next year’s “Aquaman” (and stir excitement for “The Flash,” “Cyborg,” and other spinoffs).

However, having tried Marvel’s interconnected approach with middling results, WB and DC are now mostly concerned with simply making good movies. “We don’t want to limit the creativity filmmakers can bring to the table by saying these characters have to come in a particular order and all fit into the same universe,” WB President Toby Emmerich told The Wall Street Journal.

That being said, both the studio and DC honcho Geoff Johns have made it clear they want a lighter touch than the more serious tone Zack Snyder took with “Batman v Superman: Dawn Of Justice.” To that extent, Joss Whedon was brought in and left a heavy thumbprint on the film’s rewrites and reshoots, with one source telling the paper, “A lot of the work was integrating the two tones and making it feel like one movie.”

The result is a movie that’s reportedly testing as well as “Wonder Woman,” with tracking suggesting “Justice League” will have an opening weekend over $100 million. But there’s one more secret ingredient that may help how the movie is received. Warner Bros. CEO Kevin Tsujihara apparently “made clear” that he wanted “Justice League” to run under two hours, and indeed, the movie hits that goal (it officially runs 121 minutes). That’s definitely a change from the bloated 151-minute ‘Dawn Of Justice,’ and from a financial perspective, allows for cinemas to show “Justice League” more times per day.

Clearly, a lot of thinking and tinkering went into getting “Justice League” right, and we’ll see how it all pans out when the film opens on November 17th.