I think the traditional 2 hour Hollywood style “movie” is become less and less the focus for cinema. One of the great things about the pay tv series (HBO, Netflix, etc.) is that many of their series are just 8 to 12 hour movies chopped into 1 hour segments. Indeed, “Game of Thrones” is really an 80 hour movie chopped into 1 hour segments. This allows the creators to develop much more intricate, complex and interesting plot lines and stories as well as devote much more time to developing characters that are interesting, that you care about. It’s pretty rare that I even bother to watch a standard 2 hour “movie” anymore and even rarer when I actually finish one I’ve started.
Yeah, I’ve written screenplays and I can tell you it isn’t at all hard to write 150 pages (which translates to approximately 150 min) and is considered far too long. Then THAT has to be whittled down to maybe 90 pages. Man, having 8 or 9 or 20 hours...just damn...