There’s an old adage that once a filmmaker reaches a certain point in their career, they become incapable of delivering a movie with a running time under two hours. Prestige works and superhero movies are even worse.  I’d wager that most of us don’t spend time worrying about whether our favorite horror film or Disney musical will slip in under three hours, but if the movie stars Batman or was directed by Martin Scorsese? Then yeah, it’s a legitimate concern.

Earlier today, The Playlist reported that Martin Scorsese had finally turned in a cut of his much-anticipated Silence that ran in under three hours. This report came from Scorsese’s producer Irwin Winkler, who shared that the movie currently checks in at 2 hours and 39 minutes and is, quote, “Marty’s best movie.” This follows reports from back in August that Silence checked in at a whopping 195 minutes and more recent reports claiming that the film’s running time was somewhere in the neighborhood of just over or just under the three hour mark. Based on some of Scorsese’s recent projects, a 2 hour and 39 minute running time certainly feels pretty close to a final version.

It’s not uncommon to see a first cut of a movie that is considerably longer than the final version, but it’s still always a little fun to hear about the process as a director whittles a film down to its final version. As our own Britt Hayes noted back in August, Scorsese isn’t one for Blu-ray additional footage, so whatever cuts he’s made to his own film as for the betterment of the final product. Frankly, though, the running time of a movie doesn’t really matter for an artist of Scorsese’s stature. For as long as audiences have been waiting for Scorsese to make Silence, they’ll turn out whether the movie fits in at two hours or four.

Silence stars Liam Neeson, Adam Driver, and Andrew Garfield and will open in limited theaters on December 23, 2016. Fans outside of major cities can expect to see Silence at their local multiplex sometime in January 2017.

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