Theaters Adding Intermission To Scorsese’s 3-Hour-Plus Film, Studios Not Happy About It

Movie theaters across the globe have added intermissions into Martin Scorsese’s latest 3-hour-plus film “Killers of the Flower Moon” and Paramount Pictures and Apple Original Films have made it clear they aren’t happy about it.

The Leonardo DiCaprio-led film runs 206 minutes, and theaters throughout Europe and the U.S. decided to pause the film and allow those watching the movie to take a break from anywhere between six minutes to 15 minutes, Variety reported.

One independent theater in Amsterdam and two European cinema chains sold tickets after advertising that there would be a built-in break. A spokesperson for the international theater chain UCI Cinemas told the outlet that all of its nearly 80 theaters, except for a few, included a “six-minute interval towards the middle of the film.”

A U.K.-based theater chain and an Amsterdam cinema called The Movies Haarlemmerdijk “also were offering showings with a break, according to their websites,” the outlet noted.

Martin Scorsese’s ‘Killers of the Flower Moon’ is so long that some theaters are pausing the three-and-a-half-hour epic for bathroom breaks — and it’s divided moviegoers https://t.co/j3YaMAGM12

— Insider (@thisisinsider) October 28, 2023

A theater in Colorado went viral after a photo posted on social media showed a sign about the intermission. Once the studio and the film’s producer got word of it, they shut things down.

Theaters have reportedly been contacted by the companies that by putting in the breaks, they are violating their contracts, and they’re being told to show the movie as intended, according to an individual with knowledge of the situation, Variety noted.

One theater that added an eight-minute pause told The Hollywood Reporter that moviegoers were definitely a fan of the now-ceased pause.

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“Everybody was really into it because it’s a longer movie, and they’re like, ‘I wish we would have had it for Oppenheimer,’” the individual said. “People could come out, order another drink, stretch their legs, go to the bathroom and not miss anything.”

“People were big fans of it,” the person added. “We were going to keep doing it going forward with longer movies, but now it doesn’t seem like an option.”

Editor of the film Thelma Schoonmaker said, “I understand that somebody’s running it with an intermission which is not right. That’s a violation so I have to find out about it.”

Scorsese — who has not directly addressed the intermissions — defended the film’s length to the Hindustan Times.

“People say it’s three hours, but come on, you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours,” Scorsese said. “Also, there are many people who watch theatre for three and a half hours. There are real actors on stage — you can’t get up and walk around. You give it that respect; give cinema some respect.”