How Long Is a Screenplay? Pages by Format

How many pages should a screenplay be?

These bands are industry conventions, not rules anyone publishes. A spec feature that lands between 90 and 120 pages never makes length the first question. Horror and broad comedy usually sit near the short end, and epics, period pieces and big dramas near the long end.

TV is set by the slot. A one hour drama runs roughly 43 to 65 pages and a single camera half hour 30 to 35. Multi camera sitcoms run longer on the page, around 52 to 58, because their dialogue is double spaced.

Short films have the widest range. The Academy defines a short as a film of 40 minutes or less including credits, so 40 pages is the outer edge, and many festival shorts are far shorter than that.

Does one page really equal one minute?

Only as a rule of thumb. Standard format, 12 point Courier with fixed margins, was built so a page averages close to a minute, and over a whole feature the swings mostly cancel out.

Page by page they do not. Dialogue sits in a narrow column, so quick back and forth fills a page fast and plays fast. Action works the other way: one line like “the two armies meet” can take minutes on screen. A talky comedy can play shorter than its page count and an action script longer.

How do readers and contests treat a long script?

The page count is on the first page a reader opens, so a long spec starts with a question to answer. A tight script tells them the writer can choose what matters.

Contests often write the limit down. The Nicholl Fellowship takes feature screenplays of 80 to 125 pages, and its FAQ warns that cheating the limit with smaller margins, non standard formatting or a font under 12 point may count against the script in judging. Check each contest’s own rules before you submit.

How long are produced screenplays?

We measured the screenplays of 40 produced films in the ScriptLix lab. The median runs 112 pages. 20 of the 40 fall between 90 and 120 pages, 17 run past 120 and 3 come in under 90. The shortest is 20th Century Women at 76 pages and the longest is Avatar at 156.

These are scripts of films that got made, many by established writers, and our parser counts the pages itself, so its numbers can differ slightly from the page numbers in a PDF. They show the spread that reaches the screen, not the length a new writer’s spec is judged by.