Oppenheimer Runtime Defended By Dune 2 Director As He Explains Key To $960M Box Office Success

By Dan Zinski

Published Feb 29, 2024

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Summary

Villeneuve believes Oppenheimer's 3-hour runtime contributed to its $960 million success, proving young audiences crave meaningful content.
Dune: Part Two, also a lengthy film, is projected to succeed at the box office despite previous longer films by Villeneuve facing challenges.
Villeneuve suggests that young audiences are now more open to longer cinematic experiences, as seen with the success of Oppenheimer.

Denis Villeneuve argues that Oppenheimer's 3-hour runtime boosted it to becoming a $960 million box office success. Christopher Nolan’s epic biopic on the life of the fabled father of the A-bomb became the most unlikely of blockbusters when it hit theaters in the summer of 2023. Pitted head-to-head against the audience-friendly Barbie, the film shocked box office observers by grossing nearly $1 billion worldwide, and is now poised to dominate at the Oscars.
Conventional wisdom might state that Oppenheimer’s 3-hour runtime worked against it at the box office, but Dune: Part Two director Villeneuve argues that the film’s length actually worked in its favor, because it made the movie seem like more of a meaningful experience than typical summer movie fare. Check out Villeneuve’s remarks below (via The Times):

"Think of Oppenheimer. It is a three-hour, rated-R movie about nuclear physics that is mostly talking. But the public was young — that was the movie of the year by far for my kids. There is a trend. The youth love to watch long movies because if they pay, they want to see something substantial. They are craving meaningful content.”

Could Dune: Part Two Be The Oppenheimer Of 2024?

Timothee Chalamet as Paul Atreides holding up his knife with money falling in the background — Custom image by Debanjana Chowdhury

Villeneuve has skin in the game when it comes to whether audiences really want to embrace longer films like Oppenheimer. His own movie, Dune: Part Two, clocks in at 2 hours, 46 minutes, making it just 14 minutes shorter than Nolan’s film. So far, box office tracking suggests that the Dune sequel's extended runtime won’t work against it, as it’s projected to gross upwards of $80 million in its opening weekend.
Dune: Part One was itself a longer movie at 2 hours, 35 minutes, and was considered only a middling success, grossing $434 million worldwide. Previous to that, Villeneuve’s Blade Runner 2049, which came in at 2 hours, 32 minutes, was regarded as a failure when it grossed $267 million worldwide.

Oppenheimer is available to watch on Peacock.

Villeneuve has indeed seen his own longer movies struggle to succeed at the box office, but he seems to believe that young audiences are now ready to sit down for extended periods of time and become caught up in truly substantial cinematic experiences. That was seemingly true for Oppenheimer, and perhaps it will be true for Dune: Part Two, a movie that, like Nolan’s film, promises to deliver a big-screen experience that’s worth both the money, and the time.
Source: The Times