I have been timing movie previews since August 2022. I was posting the data weekly on Twitter but I stopped using Twitter when the sale to Elon was finalized.
My Qualifications
I have a monthly pass that allows me to go up to 4 times a week. I also worked at a theater for 4 years, with part of that time being as a manager and projectionist. I have selected and put ad rolls on the film myself.
I go every Sunday morning. I started timing ads and previews before the movie started and logging them in a chart, but I am not a data analyst. I am just an annoyed theater patron.
Movie Previews and Ad Roll Lengths
Note: Most of my data is from seeing movies at AMC. I can’t guarantee every theater will be this way but theaters that use digital film distribution instead of physical film should be similar.
Timing start at the scheduled showtime and start the moment the last ad stops and the film credits start.
If you go to AMC, the Nicole Kidman ad is always the last one. I stop counting as soon as she says “AMC Theaters, we make movies better.”
- You can safely go to the theater 15 minutes late every single time.
- Ads ranged from 17 min to 31 min.
- Once, the movie started exactly on time with no ads at all, but that was two years after I started timing previews. This is an outlier.
- Newer movies have longer ads. Movies in the larger rooms have longer ads. IMAX, Dolby, Laser, Prime, and 3D/movies 4D have longer ads. For these movies, ads tend to run approximately 24-27 min.
- The longer the movie has been out the shorter the ad roll length.
- The studio/distributor behind the movie also matters. Indies and smaller budgets have less ads, but big studios like Disney and Sony have more. Studios like Searchlight and Focus can be deceptive as they are owned by bigger companies but they still aren’t as bad as said larger conglomerates.
TLDR: I tracked movie ad times for years and recommend showing up 15 minutes late.