How long does a movie have to be to win Best Picture?

Movies seem to be getting longer in recent years, demanding audience's attention whether it's with films like Oppenheimer or Zack Snyder's director cut of Justice League.

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The question is, does a film's length have an impact on the Oscars? The answer may well surprise you. Ahead of this year's edition of the event, which takes place on Sunday, 10 March, Yahoo is examining the data to come to a definitive conclusion.

How long does a movie have to be to win Best Picture?

Since the Academy Awards first began in 1929 there have been 94 Best Picture winners, and the average film length has fluctuated over the decades.

The first film to win the Oscar for Best Picture was the silent film Wings, a war drama starring Clara Bow, Charles "Buddy" Rogers, and Richard Arlen. The movie was 144 minutes long, or 2 hours 24 minutes. Films that won the prestigious award afterwards tended to be shorter than this, with Oscar winners like All Quiet on the Western Front and Cavalcade coming in around, or just under, the two hour mark.

It wasn't until 1936 Oscar winner The Great Ziegfield won with a runtime of 177 minutes, or two hours and 57 minutes, that another long film dominated at the awards show. In the aftermath of its win subsequent movies tended to be shorter, with the shortest being 1945's The Lost Weekend which was 98 minutes, or one hour 38 minutes long.

Around the World in Eighty Days bucked the trend over length once more when it won Best Picture in 1957 with a runtime of 194 minutes, but the longest Best Picture success stories were 1960 winner Ben-Hur, which won with a runtime of 224 minutes, and 1963 winner Lawrence of Arabia, which is 244 minutes long.

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This was only closely matched by The Godfather and The Godfather Part II. Francis Ford Coppola's iconic gangster films won in 1973 and 1975 with runtimes of 194 minutes and 222 minutes, respectively — or 3 hours 14 minutes, and three hours 42 minutes.

The runtime doesn't always need to be long to guarantee a win at the Oscars, though, shorter films have prevailed in years gone by like Woody Allen's comedy Annie Hall, which won in 1977 with a runtime of 86 minutes, and Driving Miss Daisy, which won in 1989 with a runtime of 94 minutes. The shortest film to ever win the Best Picture award was Marty in 1956, the romantic drama starring Ernest Borgnine is 79 minutes, or one hour and 19 minutes, long.

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It's also not necessarily the case that a long Best Picture winner will be followed by another long film, or vice versa. In fact in some years there has been a star contrast in runtimes for Oscar winners. For example after Driving Miss Daisy won in 1989 it was followed the next year by Kevin Costner's epic Western Dances With Wolves which is a whopping 207 minutes long, 3 hours 45 minutes.

After the film won in 1990, Best Picture winners over the next decade like Schindler's List, Titanic, and Gladiator have ranged between 113 and 195 minutes long.

Since the start of the millennium movies to win Best Picture have not been as long as this, with the exception of Peter Jackson's conclusion to The Lord of the Rings trilogy —The Return of the King— which is 201-minutes long, or 3 hours and 35 minutes. The data shows that movies got shorter in recent years, and are now starting to slowly tick back up again.

In the 2000s, Oscar winners have averaged between 100-201 minutes long, with most films in the last five years clocking in at just over the two hour mark. While they're not the shortest movies to win at the Oscars over the course of its history, it shows a trend over the past two decades.

Recent winners at the awards show include 132-minute film Parasite, 111-minute film CODA, and 2023 winner Everything Everywhere All At Once — which is 139 minutes long. This year comes the possibility of Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer taking the prize for Best Picture, and with a runtime of 180 minutes, or three hours, it will mark the return of long films dominating at the Oscars.

The Oscars will be live-streamed on ITV1 and ITVX on Sunday 10 March, at 10.30pm.

Watch the trailer for Oppenheimer: