What’s the longest a screenplay can be at the midpoint?
65 pages? 70 pages??? I’ve got almost 80 and need to know how much I have to cut
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1 answer
Some help is at my other answer: How firm is the 120 page limit on a screenplay.
If you haven't sold a screenplay before, the more you exceed 120 pages the less likely you are to sell. That's just the facts, long screenplays are more expensive and harder to market, at 160 pages you are talking about 2H 40M of screentime. A few famous writers can get away with that, for Star Wars or Lord of the Rings or something, but with near certainty it is not a breaking-in-to-the-business screenplay for an unknown.
My answer at the link above provides another link to average lengths; stick to the 120 pages and make your story midpoint somewhere on page 59, 60 or 61. The leeway is if you have a short first act and long third, or vice versa.
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