No toilet break for 3-hour Avengers movie

NEW YORK • It is not only the fight between Avengers and villain Thanos. In the cinema, there is also a struggle by the viewers to resist going to the loo, in a bid not to miss out on the action on screen.

The movie clocks in at three hours and cinema chains in the United States have ruled out intermissions.

"We're telling everyone to prep as if they're going into surgery," joked Joe Russo, one of the movie's directors, in an interview with ComicBook.com.

But theatres in some countries have come to the rescue roughly halfway through the screening.

Avengers fans in Egypt, Italy, Portugal, Switzerland and Turkey reported having a timeout during showings.

Meanwhile, the industry expects the movie to do so well that 29 AMC theatres in the US showed it round the clock from Thursday to Friday last week. An additional 17 were open for 72 hours straight.

Pundits expect the film to win the box-office war with a North American debut of more than US$340 million (S$463 million).

NYTIMES

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A version of this article appeared in the print edition of The Straits Times on April 29, 2019, with the headline No toilet break for 3-hour Avengers movie. Subscribe