Avengers Endgame is locked\, confirm Russo Brothers. Three-hour runtime looks li...

Avengers Endgame is locked, confirm Russo Brothers. Three-hour runtime looks likely

The Russo Brothers, directors of Avengers: Endgame, have revealed that the film is locked. They had said as recently as February that their cut is touching the three-hour mark.

hollywood Updated: Mar 14, 2019 13:43 IST
Avengers Endgame will see Chris Evans as Captain America, perhaps for the last Time.

Directors Joe & Anthony Russo have announced that they’ve completed the edit on Avengers: Endgame, less than two months ahead of the film’s release. The brothers tweeted the news on Wednesday.

Sharing a picture of an ice cream station, the brothers wrote, “Last day of editorial Sundae Bar. Picture is locked...” The brothers have maintained that the film could clock in at close to three hours, and that Marvel is prepared to release whichever cut of the film that the brothers feel is necessary. This would make Endgame the longest MCU film.

Even though the ‘picture is locked’, last-minute fine-tuning will continue in departments such as sound and VFX. Marvel usually begins screening its films for the press a few weeks ahead of release, but the studio might take the unusual Avengers: Infinity War route with Endgame, holding back on public screenings until the last moment so as to protect secrets.

Ever since November, it has been reported that Endgame is flirting with a three-hour runtime. The possibility of adding an intermission - unusual outside India - has also been thrown around. Joe Russo had said in an Instagram live chat, “I’ll say it could easily be a three hour film, but I think that we’re very hard on the material, we like it to play at a certain pace. I’m sure that we’ll squeeze it.” He continued, “The running time on Avengers 4 is currently sitting right at three hours. We’ll see if that holds.”

In February, the Russos told Collider, “We’re still at the three-hour mark,” adding that “the studio is down with what the best story is. Right now, we think the movie is playing well and we’ve had great responses from our test audiences and we’re feeling very good about where it is. We’re still doing work to it. We’re not done with it.”

Joe Russo, who will be making a pit stop in India to promote the film in April, said, “This one, in particular, feels like three hours worth of real estate.”

Avengers: Endgame stars Robert Downey Jr, Chris Evans, Chris Hemsworth, Scarlett Johansson, Mark Ruffalo, Jeremy Renner and others. The film is slated for an April 26 release.

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First Published: Mar 14, 2019 13:43 IST