What about all the lower budget 1-5M contemporary films from the 90s? There's no new directors like Kevin Smith / Quinten Tarantino anymore.

I'd be fine with the length if they actually used the time for something good.

If I understand movie theater economics correctly, the studio gets 80 to 95% of the ticket sales, depending on how "first run" the movie is. The theaters actually make their money on selling concessions.

Well, the longer the movie, the more people feel the need of snacks to get through it. So maybe the theaters are pushing longer movies rather than shorter, because they make more money that way.

Just an off-the-cuff hypothesis...

Bit of a tight line to walk. Longer movies mean fewer showings per day. When I saw that Oppenheimer was three hours long -I want to watch that at home so I can take a bathroom break/snacks so a personal pause button is an improvement on the theater.

If movies are regularly going to be 3 hours long, movie theatres need to bring back intermission breaks.

I've always thought this would make sense.

Often during a three hour film I've ran out of refreshments and would like to buy a drink or something for the last hour.

It used to be fairly common with the big "epic" films. And probably no live theater production is going to go much over 90 minutes without an intermission.