Kimbo said: "I've said it before here and I'll say it again before people keep freaking out about the running time - barring something like the original 1980's version of Les Miz, My Fair Lady is one of the longest musicals ever written - right up there with Showboat and things like that.
The movie runs 2 hours 55 minutes, and that's with a truncated overture, no curtain call, no complicated scenery changes, and only a 30-second 'intermission'.
The Melissa Errico/Richard Chamerlain revival also ran 3 hours.
They will get it down to 3 hours here, through pacing and tightening up a set change here or there... but it will never run much less than that."
True, most productions run around 3 hours, but when I did a production, it ran 2 hrs. 30 min., and the only cuts we made were to transitional music we didn't need. The pacing was brisk, though not rushed, the transitions were fluid, and the tempos were lively. I'm not saying this to brag or anything, just to point out that it can be done. The pacing of dialogue of the film is abysmally slow. Not that I don't trust this revival to be excellent, just saying that 3 hours is not the case for all productions--so much variation can be found.