In the fall of 2023, Martin Scorsese’s latest movie hit the silver screen across theatres all over the world. Like The Irishman (2019), Killers of the Flower Moon was one of his longest projects yet – 206 minutes, or a brisk three and a half hours long. What followed was a debate between the movie studio and theater chains, with the moviegoers caught in the middle. Martin Scorsese’s editor and long-time collaborator Thelma Schoonmaker said, “I understand that somebody’s running [the film] with an intermission which is not right. That’s a violation so I have to find out about it”. This is what she said, in an interview with the Standard.

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Theatre experience versus on-demand content

The intermission debate seems to boil down to a generational clash, between the old and new ways of consuming entertainment media. So, we should first understand that modern moviegoers are surrounded by real-time content. For example, Netflix changed the game for shows and movies with its video streaming on-demand. The internet is responsible for a lot of these changes – it houses a plethora of entertainment that’s available instantaneously.

Take online casinos as another example, which use the old bingo formula with a digital twist. The result is an industry that offers hundreds of bingo games, all with different themes and art styles, available at the same bingo games site. On-demand entertainment has been available to consumers for decades now, and it seems to have influenced the moviegoer’s expectations and tolerance of longer media. Some of those expectations are reasonable, however. Killers of the Flower Moon is a very long movie and traditionally, longer movies used to come with an intermission break.

For those who don’t know, Killers of the Flower Moon follows the real story of the Osage Nation during the 1920s. Based in Oklahoma, the tribe suffered a string of crimes against them after becoming freshly rich from oil on their land, sparking a secret war that was overlooked by the authorities. As part of this struggle, Leonardo DiCaprio’s Ernest Burkhart is recruited into the schemes of his uncle, Robert De Niro’s William King Hale. Scorsese’s movie is based on the book by David Grann, opting to portray the book with ruthless 1:1 accuracy, and that’s where its length comes from.

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The intermission debate

That brings us to the debate. When Killers of the Flower Moon hit movie theaters, it came without an intermission. This means there wasn’t a natural break in action during the movie, where it would be agreed that theaters present an intermission. Instead, the film plays uninterrupted for three and a half hours, which is the creative will of Scorsese and his distributors, Paramount Pictures and Apple Original Films.

So, it is in fact a violation of distribution agreements for theaters to insert an intermission where one isn’t intended. You can probably see where this is going – theater chains across the world provided an intermission against the will of the movie’s distributors. The distributors are now contacting theaters to limit this practice as much as possible, despite it being celebrated by some moviegoers. As a trend, movies have been getting longer, so the return of the intermission seems a fair compromise between consumer comfort and an overlong stay in a theater seat.

Scorsese has stayed clear of the intermission drama, though he did defend the movie’s length by stating “you can sit in front of the TV and watch something for five hours.” Ironically, fans of Marty may be more willing to sit and watch this new movie from the comfort of their own home.

Studio expectations that it should be seen in theaters but also with no intermission seems jarring. Even today, longer performances in operas and dramatic theater shows use intermissions. Using an intermission is the older way of presenting longer media, so if Scorsese wants to recreate the authentic cinema experience in his crusade against modern filmmaking, welcoming the intermission may be a tool to get moviegoers on board with longer historical epics.