Industry Practice desk · Aug 16, 2026

How long should a screenplay be?

A feature spec that a stranger will pick up usually lands between 90 and 120 pages. 100–110 is the common reader comfort band. That is a distribution of practice, not a law — and it is not the same question as runtime.

Check your page count Open the anatomy atlas

Last reviewed Aug 16, 2026. Official windows follow the Submission Center freshness dates.

Feature reader clock

90–120pages

Comfort 100–110

Distribution: Reader bands, not a law
Contracts: Contest windows for a named cycle
MovieSum: Story words, not pages

Check your page count Open the anatomy atlas

Last reviewed Aug 16, 2026. Official windows follow the Submission Center freshness dates.

The direct answer

Write the finished story. Then ask whether a cold reader will treat the PDF as a feature, a pilot, or a short. 90–120 is the feature band they already know how to skim.

What readers are doing

Page count is an early estimate of runtime and writer discipline. Extreme length without cause is a common pass reason. Extreme shortness can read as unfinished unless the story is actually over.

What this is not

It is not a runtime. It is not a quality score. It is not permission to cheat margins. Confirm the visible PDF before a contest, lab, or manager asks for pages.

Formats

Feature, pilot, and short are different clocks

Do not force a feature page count onto a half-hour sample. Do not treat a 70-page "feature" as lean unless the story is finished. Match the job the draft has to do.

Feature spec

90–120usual

Comfort 100–110

Cold-read feature specs usually land 90–120 pages. 100–110 is the common reader comfort band. Comedy and horror often sit shorter; sprawling action and sci-fi can run longer when the scale is on the page.

Half-hour pilot

22–38usual

Comfort 28–35

Half-hour samples usually sit in the mid-20s to mid-30s. Streamer half-hours vary; match recent comps in the lane rather than a network sitcom default.

Hour pilot

45–70usual

Comfort 52–62

Hour pilots commonly land in the 50s and low 60s. Cable and streamer hours stretch; a 70-page sample needs the extra scenes to earn the extra paper.

Short film

5–40usual

Comfort 8–25

Shorts follow festival and production limits more than a reader comfort band. Confirm the festival page cap before treating any number as typical.

Feature genre reader bands

Published reader ranges, not production runtimes. A 102-page drama and a 102-page comedy can both be finished; a 130-page comedy usually is not.

Feature usual 90–120

Horror
85–105
Horror specs often stay lean so the scare machine can turn over.
Comedy
90–105
Comedy specs usually stay closer to 90–105; extra pages rarely make a joke land harder.
Thriller
95–115
Thrillers often sit in the high 90s to mid-110s when the plot stays tight.
Drama
100–120
Dramas have more range. Intimate pieces can finish near 100; sprawling ones need the extra scenes.
Action / sci-fi
105–125
World-building and set pieces can justify more pages. They do not excuse empty ones.

The faint band is the feature usual range 90–120. Comfort 100–110.

Reviewed official page windows

Only opportunities with a published full-draft page span appear here. Sample-only caps — first five pages, first ten — are not length windows.

Feature usual 90–120

Academy Nicholl
80–125 · 2026–2027 public portals

The reviewed Academy Nicholl window is 80–125 pages for 2026–2027 public portals. Read the opportunity profile before treating that span as current.

Original measurement

2,077 screenplays, measured in words

The Screenplay Anatomy Atlas analyzes MovieSum in aggregate. Median story words: 21,579. Median scenes: 130. MovieSum does not preserve stable pagination, so these numbers are not page counts. They are the second clock when you have a draft file and not a laid-out PDF.

Story words

10th · 15,87290th · 29,019

25th: 18,380
Median: 21,579
75th: 25,179

Scenes

10th · 6890th · 211

25th: 97
Median: 130
75th: 168

Length is only half the question. How those words are distributed — where the scenes are, how long they run, where the action share dips — is what a reader is describing when they say a draft drags. The screenplay pacing desk measures that side of it against the same corpus.

Interactive check

Place your draft, privately

The checker reports where a page count sits. It does not grade the screenplay. Opening a Final Draft file does not upload the draft.

How we know

Reader bands synthesize current industry practice pages — including Final Draft's public length guidance — and the ranges working readers still cite for cold specs.

Official windows come from the Submission Center registry. Only opportunities with a published full-draft span appear. The 2026–2027 Academy Nicholl rules state 80–125 pages in standard industry format.

Story-word context comes from the Anatomy Atlas aggregate of 2,077 MovieSum records (dataset, CC BY-NC 4.0).

Questions writers ask

How long should a feature screenplay be?: Most contemporary feature specs that a stranger will pick up land between 90 and 120 pages, with 100–110 as the common reader comfort band. Comedy and horror often sit shorter. Page count is a pacing signal, not a stopwatch.
Does one page equal one minute?: It is a planning convention, not a measurement. Dialogue-heavy pages run faster; action-heavy pages run slower. Use page count to estimate whether a cold read will feel like a feature, then confirm runtime from a table read or cut.
How long should a TV pilot be?: Half-hour samples usually sit in the mid-20s to mid-30s. Hour pilots commonly land in the 50s and low 60s. Match recent comps in the lane rather than forcing a feature page count onto a series sample.
Do contest page limits replace the reader band?: Yes when you are submitting. The reviewed Academy Nicholl window is 80–125 pages. Confirm the official opportunity page before you send — a listed range is not the same as an open window. Sample-only caps such as first five pages are not full-draft length windows.
Can I estimate pages from a Final Draft file?: Only as a planning proxy. Open a local .fdx and the checker places story words on the MovieSum corpus. That is not the page count a reader sees. Confirm the laid-out PDF before you submit.
Can I open a Final Draft FDX?: Yes. Open a local .fdx for story-word and scene-count context. Page numbers inside Final Draft are not the reader-facing count — fonts and engines reflow. Confirm the visible PDF.

Keep both cuts

Name a save point before the next cut

Plot keeps the laid-out page count on the draft you are actually writing, with save points so a shorter pass does not erase the longer one. Export FDX when the office asks.