How Long Should a Screenplay Be? The Page Counts That Get Read

The ranges that do not raise an eyebrow

There is no rule written anywhere, but there is a shared expectation, and it is remarkably consistent across production companies, contests and managers. Land inside it and your page count says nothing about you. Land outside it and your page count says something before your story gets a chance to.

• Feature: 90-120 pages. Comedy sits 90-105, drama 100-120, spec thrillers rarely need more than 110.
• Hour drama pilot: 45-60 pages. Streaming allows more; the network expectation is closer to 55.
• Half hour pilot: 22-35 pages. Single camera runs shorter than multi-camera.
• Short film: 1 page per screen minute, and under 15 for anything you hope to see produced.

Why over-length reads as inexperience

A 140-page spec tells a reader one of two things: the writer could not decide what the story was about, or the writer could not bear to cut. Both are craft problems, and both are visible from the title page. Length is not the offence; the indecision it advertises is.

The opposite is also true. A 78-page feature suggests scenes that resolve too fast, an underweight middle and a protagonist who is not made to pay for anything. Short scripts are not tight scripts by default.

The three cuts that reclaim ten pages without story loss

Almost every over-long draft carries the same fat, in the same places. Take these three passes before you touch anything structural.

• Enter late, leave early. Cut the first and last quarter-page of every scene. Ten pages is typical across a feature.
• Kill the travel. Any scene whose only job is getting a character from one place to another is a cut, not a trim.
• Merge duplicate functions. If two scenes deliver the same information to the same character, one of them is a rewrite of the other.

Check it before anyone else does

Page count is the cheapest fix in screenwriting, and the one writers put off longest. Run your opening pages through The First Ten and your full draft through the Armageddon Score, and you will see exactly where the pacing score is paying for length you do not need.