Black Mirror: Bandersnatch may have more than 300 minutes of footage

Earlier today, the internet was taken by storm with the news that Netflix is releasing Black Mirror: Bandersnatch in less than 24 hours … and for good reason. The Netflix movie is just that — a full-length film. It’s also coming without a heck of a lot of promotion in advance – not that Black Mirror really needs it.

As it turns out, though, there’s also something so much deeper to this project than was first indicated. According to a report from Slash Film, the run time for the movie has been clocked in at over 300 minutes — or, we should say that there are over 300 minutes of possible footage. All signs are pointing towards this movie being the secret Netflix project that is a choose-your-own-adventure story. This is a medium that has developed a reasonable amount of popularity in the world of books (our favorites as a kid), but it’s a little bit harder to pull off in television form.

To be specific, Netflix is really one of the only formats in which this sort of thing can work, largely due to the simple fact that it gives you the ability to have different prompts come up during the viewing process that allows you to view the story in one direction or another. We have a good feeling that this is going to be an extremely-popular form of entertainment over this weekend, largely because it is a chance for most mainstream viewers to witness something that they have probably never seen before. Innovation is often a big sell, and we think that this is even more the case when it is attached to something that is an enormous franchise. Black Mirror has plenty of critical acclaim to its name, and major awards recognition.

What we wonder more than anything else is simply this: How many imitations are going to come out of this? It feels almost like a given that, in the aftermath of this movie airing, we’re probably going to see other shows try to find a way to do something like this — though we can’t imagine it being easy. Just think about how much time it took to film more than 300 minutes of footage — it’s basically the equivalent of ten episodes of a single-camera comedy series or more than six episodes of a 42-minute network drama, but also with a super-high production value.

What are you the most interested in seeing when it comes to Black Mirror: Bandersnatch? Be sure to share some of your thoughts right now in the attached comments, and we’ll have more news on the series soon.

(Photo: Netflix.)