How Long Is a Screenplay? Page Counts by Format and Genre

A feature screenplay is 90 to 120 pages long, with most produced scripts landing between 100 and 115. Because standard format runs close to one page per minute, screenplay length is really a runtime in disguise: a short film is 5 to 15 pages, a half-hour TV script 25 to 35, and an hour of television 50 to 62.

Updated 2026-09-22 · About 7 sections · 5 answered questions

How long is a screenplay? The numbers by format

Screenplay length is measured in pages, and pages stand in for minutes. A feature runs 90 to 120 pages. Everything else is a fraction or a multiple of that, set by the runtime the format has to fill.

Format	Pages	Runtime it represents	Notes
Feature film	90–120	90–120 min	110 is the comfortable centre for a spec.
Short film	5–15	5–15 min	Festival blocks are built from this range; up to 40 min is eligible but hard to place.
Half-hour TV, single-camera	25–35	21–35 min	Network at the low end, streaming at the high end.
Half-hour TV, multi-camera	40–55	21–23 min	Double-spaced dialogue inflates the count; not comparable to single-camera.
One-hour TV drama	50–62	42–60 min	Network hours fill 42–45 minutes; streaming hours run longer.
Animated feature	85–100	85–100 min	Shorter runtimes are the convention for family audiences.
Web series or vertical episode	2–12	1–12 min	The episode, not the season, is the unit.

Two related questions have their own articles. If you want to know what target to write to and how to cut a long draft, read how many pages a screenplay should be. If you want the mechanism behind the page-to-minute conversion, read how many screenplay pages equal one minute. This article covers what the lengths are, why they differ by genre, and what a reader concludes from yours.

Screenplay length by genre

Within the feature range, genre moves the number, because genre sets runtime expectations that exhibitors, streamers and audiences have already priced in.

Genre	Typical pages	Why
Comedy	90–105	A comic premise has about ninety minutes of fuel; repetition shows faster in comedy than anywhere else.
Horror	85–100	Dread decays. The genre rewards a short, sharp shape.
Thriller	95–115	Tension is a function of compression; the structure has fixed beats with minimum lengths.
Drama	100–120	The audience is buying interiority, and two-people-in-a-room scenes need time to build.
Action	100–120	Action paragraphs play longer than they read, so action scripts are kept shorter on the page to land at a normal runtime.
Family and animation	85–100	Younger audiences set the ceiling; studios rarely release long family films.
Period and epic drama	110–130	The only genre where readers tolerate a spec over 120, and only from a writer with credits.

Use the table as a diagnostic, not a rule. A 118-page comedy is a note before anyone has read a joke; a 108-page drama is invisible. If your genre and your page count disagree, the reader assumes the page count is right and the genre is wrong: the comedy is probably a dramedy with too much second act.

Why screenplay length equals runtime

The format was engineered so that a page approximates a minute. Twelve-point Courier on US Letter, a 1.5-inch left margin and one-inch margins elsewhere give roughly 55 lines per page, and 55 lines of mixed action and dialogue, spoken and played at performance pace, lands near sixty seconds. The measurements are in screenplay margins and font; the point here is that length is only meaningful because the format is fixed.

The relationship is an average over a whole script, not a property of any page:

Dialogue-heavy pages usually run short. The dialogue column is narrow and every speech costs a cue line, so a page of quick exchanges holds few words and plays in 40 to 50 seconds.
Action-heavy pages usually run long. One wide line of action can describe a minute of screen; a fight written in a paragraph can play for three.
Montage pages run far under. Twenty seconds for a page is ordinary.
Held moments run over. A monologue with pauses, or a silent long take, plays slower than the page suggests.

So a 100-page action script and a 100-page dialogue drama are both "100 pages long" and may differ by twenty minutes on screen. When a producer asks how long your screenplay is, they are asking for the page count, and they will do the genre adjustment in their head.

What readers infer from screenplay length

Before a reader opens page one they have seen two numbers: the page count on the coverage form and the genre on the title page. Together those numbers make a prediction, and the read either confirms or overturns it.

Feature page count	What a reader assumes
Under 80	Not a feature. Either a treatment in screenplay clothing or a script missing its second act.
80–89	Thin, unless it is horror or a tight comedy. Probably fixable.
90–110	Nothing. The count is invisible and the writing gets judged on its own.
111–120	Fine for drama, thriller, action. A comedy at this length is a note.
121–135	The writer did not cut. The read starts with the question of what will go.
Over 135	Often not read to the end. An established writer gets the benefit of the doubt; a spec does not.

Readers also look at the shape of length, not just the total. A script whose first act ends on page 38 is long in the wrong place. A script with a 28-page climax has a third act that is really a second act. This is why counting pages per act is a more useful measurement than counting pages, and why three-act structure is usually taught with page numbers attached.

None of these judgements are about art. They are about the reader's evening, the producer's budget and the distributor's schedule. A long script costs everyone downstream something, and an unknown writer has not yet earned the right to charge them for it.

A brief history of the 120-page ceiling

The page-per-minute calibration dates from the studio era, when script departments timed finished films against the drafts that produced them and standardised the typewriter layout so the ratio held. Courier was simply what typewriters produced; the margins left room for binding on the left and notes on the right. Nobody designed the format for elegance.

The 120-page ceiling became a rule of thumb because two hours was the exhibition norm: a two-hour film gets more screenings per day than a two-and-a-half-hour one, and the extra screenings paid for the marquee. Streaming removed the screening count but not the habit. Contemporary spec scripts have if anything drifted shorter, with 95 to 110 now the most common range for scripts that sell, partly because readers are busier and partly because tight scripts read as confident.

The numbers in this article describe practice, not law. Plenty of produced screenplays run 140 pages. They were written by people who had already sold a shorter one.

How to measure your own screenplay's length

Page count is only meaningful in standard format, so measure in it.

Check the format before you count. 12-point Courier, US Letter, 1.5-inch left margin, one-inch right, top and bottom. A script in a proportional font or with wide dialogue margins has a page count that means nothing.
Exclude the title page. Numbering starts on the first page of script. A script whose last page reads 104 is 104 pages.
Count pages per act. Note the page of the first act break, the midpoint and the second act break. Those four numbers say more about the draft than the total.
Look at the dialogue-to-action ratio. A heavy action skew means the film will run longer than the page count suggests; a heavy dialogue skew means shorter.
Time a read of the dialogue scenes. A cold read is slower than a performance, but it catches the four-minute scene that reads as a page and a half.

Software makes most of this automatic. Zen Writer keeps a live page count and script statistics, including estimated runtime and a scene breakdown, so the number is on screen while you write instead of discovered at the end. Its Fountain and FDX imports re-paginate a draft written elsewhere into standard format, which is the fastest way to find out what a Word document is really worth in pages. If you are drafting away from a desk, Zen Writer for iPhone shows the same statistics on the phone. For a one-off check without installing anything, paste the script into the free runtime estimator.

If you are still deciding what to write at all, the screenwriting guides start from the idea and work forward to the page count, and how to write a short film covers the form where length matters most.

Common mistakes about screenplay length

Padding to look like a feature. Extra blank lines, a wider margin, a bigger font. Readers see it on page one, and it does not make the film longer.
Cutting to a number by shaving lines. Taking a line from every page removes texture and leaves structure untouched. Cut scenes.
Comparing a TV script to a feature. A 60-page network hour is not a 60-minute film; it is 42 minutes with act breaks.
Comparing multi-camera to single-camera. The 48-page sitcom and the 30-page single-camera comedy are the same length on screen.
Counting the title page. It is a cover, not page one.
Treating the ceiling as a target. 120 is the edge, not the goal. Most scripts that sell are shorter.

Frequently asked questions

How many pages is a movie script?

A feature film script runs 90 to 120 pages, and most produced scripts land between 100 and 115. Comedies and horror films sit near 90 to 105; dramas and action films near 100 to 120. In standard format each page represents roughly one minute of screen time.

How long is a screenplay for a 2-hour movie?

About 120 pages, since standard format runs close to a page per minute. In practice the finished film will differ from the page count by several minutes in either direction, depending on how much of the script is action, montage or dense dialogue.

Can a screenplay be 150 pages?

It can, and some produced films started that long, but a 150-page spec from an unknown writer is rarely read to the end. Readers treat anything over 120 as a script that was not cut, and over 135 as a script with a structural problem.

How long is a short film screenplay?

Five to fifteen pages for most festival purposes, which is five to fifteen minutes on screen. Awards categories accept shorts up to 40 minutes, but programmes are built from films under 15, and 8 to 12 pages is the practical sweet spot for a first short.

How many words is a screenplay?

Roughly 15,000 to 25,000 words for a feature, because the format leaves so much white space that a page holds only 150 to 250 words. Word count is not a measure anyone in the industry uses; page count in standard format is.

Ready to turn this idea into a screenplay?

Zen Writer shows the live page count, estimated runtime and dialogue-to-action split in its script statistics, so you know how long the screenplay is while you are still writing it.

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Screenwriting Education

How Long Is a Screenplay? Page Counts by Format and Genre

How long is a screenplay? The numbers by format

Screenplay length by genre

Why screenplay length equals runtime

What readers infer from screenplay length

A brief history of the 120-page ceiling

How to measure your own screenplay's length

Common mistakes about screenplay length

Frequently asked questions

Ready to turn this idea into a screenplay?

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