2024's Oscars Won't Beat One Major Record

The Impact of Contemporary Cinema Trends

The length of movies in contemporary cinema has been a subject of interest, with big-budget blockbusters stretching past the two-and-a-half hour mark while major movies often last closer to a brisk 90 minutes. In 2023, Barbie, the biggest movie, was just under two hours long, while its box office counterpart, Oppenheimer, lasted three hours. This trend is likely to impact the 2024 Oscars, as the Academy Awards typically focus more on artistic merit than box office popularity when selecting nominees.

Vivien Leigh looking stern and intense in Gone With the Wind

Many of the past year’s most critically acclaimed movies, such as Killers of the Flower Moon and Oppenheimer, are lengthy, serious historical period pieces that have a long tradition of winning over Academy voters. None of the 2024 Best Picture Oscars contenders, however, are capable of beating a record that has lasted 85 years.

Composite image of Lily Gladstone in Killers of the Flower Moon and Cillian Murphy in Oppenhimer

The Longest Best Picture Winner in History

Gone With The Wind, the longest Best Picture winner in history, currently holds the record at three hours and 44 minutes. If nominated, Killers of the Flower Moon would come close to matching this runtime with a duration of three hours and 26 minutes, but no other Best Picture contender comes close to matching this record.

The unwieldy runtime of Killers of the Flower Moon was the source of some criticism upon its release, and this could put a dent in its Oscars hopes, especially as it goes head-to-head with the slightly less bladder-testing Oppenheimer.

Why Gone With The Wind's Oscars Record Is Unlikely To Be Broken

The grandeur of Gone With The Wind’s melodramatic epic style has fallen out of fashion in contemporary cinema. Few four-hour movies are even green-lit by studios in the 2020s, and the phenomenon of prestige TV has resulted in TV shows gaining as much popularity and acclaim as many major movie releases, meaning a modern project with the scope and scale of Gone With The Wind likely wouldn’t compete at the Oscars.

Movies from the era of Gone With The Wind had intermissions, patrons would routinely enter halfway through screenings, and double-features were growing in popularity. Nowadays, nobody wants to spend that long at the cinema. As a result, the chances of any future Best Picture breaking its runtime record is highly unlikely.