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.
Industry Practice desk · Sep 22, 2026
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.
90–120pages
Comfort 100–110
Last reviewed Sep 22, 2026. Official windows follow the Submission Center freshness dates.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
Horror
85–105
Comedy
90–105
Thriller
95–115
Drama
100–120
Action / sci-fi
105–125
The faint band is the feature usual range 90–120. Comfort 100–110.
Only opportunities with a published full-draft page span appear here. Sample-only caps — first five pages, first ten — are not length windows.
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
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
Scenes
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.
Produced screenplay research
Compare the spread of produced feature scripts, then look at the genre you are writing. Use the range to frame a reading decision; the recipient’s page rules still govern your submission.
Source: The PreList Industry Intelligence (2026). The Anatomy of a Produced Screenplay.
PDF counts include title pages, blank pages and front matter. They are not directly equivalent to numbered story pages in submission rules.
All eligible scripts · 428 eligible scripts
pages
Tallest bar: 93 scripts
| Interval | Scripts |
|---|---|
| 60 to <70 | 1 |
| 70 to <80 | 4 |
| 80 to <90 | 17 |
| 90 to <100 | 42 |
| 100 to <110 | 78 |
| 110 to <120 | 93 |
| 120 to <130 | 72 |
| 130 to <140 | 46 |
| 140 to <150 | 26 |
| 150 to <160 | 15 |
| 160 to <170 | 16 |
| 170 to <180 | 6 |
| 180 to <190 | 5 |
| 190 to <200 | 2 |
| 200 to <210 | 2 |
| 210 to <220 | 1 |
| 220 to <230 | 1 |
| 230 to <240 | 0 |
| 240 to <250 | 0 |
| 250 to <260 | 1 |
Choose a genre to compare its median and middle half with the complete eligible sample.
A genre comparison gives your page count context. If your draft is unusually long or short for the story you intend, read for the cause: repeated beats, missing development, or a deliberate choice of scale.
Produced feature screenplays, 2000–2026. Eligible samples differ by measure. Genre groups follow the publisher’s classification. These are selected produced scripts, not a representative sample of specs or a measure of quality.
Inkwell extracted the published aggregates and created these comparisons and charts. No underlying screenplay files were remeasured.
Versioned source · Measurement definitions · CC BY 4.0
Download the measurements, attribution and source notes (JSON)Interactive check
The checker reports where a page count sits. It does not grade the screenplay. Opening a Final Draft file does not upload the draft.
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).
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.