Don’t Expect to See Many Deleted Scenes From ‘Avengers: Endgame’

Much ado has been made about the three-hour runtime of Avengers: Endgame, with some people complaining about the length while other fans wonder why it’s not longer. But it sounds like directors Joe and Anthony Russo have found the right length for the epic end of the Infinity Saga, serving as the culmination of the Marvel Cinematic Universe thus far.

While speaking with Collider, the Russo Brothers said they didn’t leave a lot for the cutting room floor while editing Avengers: Endgame, indicating that fans should not expect to see a lot of deleted scenes when the film releases on home video later this year.

“This is a weird one; we’ve been working on this movie for well over a year in editorial because we had finished it in 2018,” said Joe, “And it literally hasn’t moved maybe more than two minutes from its original runtime of the directors’ cut. It’s just a tough one, there’s a lot of story in it. And we like emotional stakes that require screen time.”

When joking about a four-hour version of Avengers: Endgame, Joe revealed that they don’t have enough footage or story to reach that lengthy runtime.

“We have almost everything in this movie that we shot,” Joe said.

Anthony added, “We love tight, propulsive storytelling. We like movies that are very dense in what they’re offering you moment to moment so that when you revisit them, there’s more there to keep chewing on. We try to structure movies that are very tight, and this is a tight three hours.”

When asked about deleted scenes specifically, Joe revealed “there’s a handful, there’s not a ton of them.”

The directors previously spoke with ComicBook.com about the movie’s length, attributing the pacing and storytelling to the screenwriting team of Stephen McFeely and Christopher Markus.

“[Fitting everything into the run time] was very much worked out on the script level with Markus and McFeely,” Joe told us. “We spent a long time with them exploring all the possibilities and honing down on what the essential storytelling was. That’s such a complex question. You can’t really be dealing with that once you get to production. That’s definitely a script issue.”

“Yeah, focus and discipline is what it comes down to,” Anthony added. “We like to keep the stories propulsive. It was painful for us to come in at three hours, but we just couldn’t get the story down from that.”

Avengers: Endgame premieres in theaters on April 26th.

—–

Have you subscribed to ComicBook Nation, the official Podcast of ComicBook.com yet? Check it out by clicking here or listen below.

In this latest episode, we dive deep into Shazam!, One Punch Man and more! Make sure to subscribe now and never miss an episode!