That being the case, then having a hard runtime limit is surely a new dilemma in movie-making.
Of course Eon would’ve been aware of this early on - or from the point they agreed to shoot imax. That was probably after the first draft of the script; I’m guessing it was decided once CJF was onboard and had this discussion with Sandgren and BB.
Thereafter they would’ve worked on the script with a max runtime in mind and that’s a new phenomena in filmmaking. Of course they’ll always have an eye on page count because they don’t want to put off half the audience with excessive runtime, nor constrict theatres to too few screenings. Though with the recent success of looooong movies they may well have prioritised ‘getting it right’ over runtime concerns, if not for the imax threshold.
I don’t want to compare NTTD with cinematic masterpieces (not yet 
), but to make a point of why this duration threshold is potentially bad, imagine The Godfather II with 27 minutes shaved off to fit imax… Apocalypse Now Final Cut (for me the best cut) with 17 minutes missing! Well, that’d be the original cinematic cut, which was trimmed for excessive runtime and is now seen by Coppola and many others to be inferior to the Final Cut and even the 410 minute Redux.
How half baked would Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A a time in America be if it were a massive 84 minutes shorter?
I’m not necessarily talking about a comparative damage done to NTTD by being restricted to 165 minutes. My point is how this new paradigm of a time limit might effect movies in general. Great art shouldn’t have restrictions, as the above examples show. But if those movies were made today there may well be loud voices dictating this time limit in order to fully access the imax market.
Back to NTTD… A script’s length should be dictated by the story it tells and the number of characters and how much depth we want from from. NTTD seems to have a whole lot of story to tell and no shortage of characters (including 2 villains).
I’d suggest that the imax decision wouldn’t have been made by the time the first draft was being written. When that decision was made a redraft may well have been needed to fit the 165 limit. But even if it was already under 165 it’s page count is never a strict reflection of final cut runtime. GVs (beauty shots, establishing shot, pacing interludes) as well as improvs while shooting, which I recall reading somewhere that CJF is keen on, will push runtime over the page count. That’s normal! The edit process may counter that with scripted moments that are then deemed unnecessary in the edit.
Point is that it’s a very fluid process with an end runtime almost impossible to predict — if that process is about finding the best cut… having an arbitrary runtime limit is a novel, very uncomfortable restriction on the workflow. If the best cut happens to come in under time, whoopydoo! But what if it doesn’t? And knowing this restriction early on - how does that effect the decision making of everyone, even at a subconscious level; shooting it this way is best for the story, for characters, buuuut… that’ll be longer and might give me a headache in the edit, so I’ll do it this quicker way instead.
So, of course they knew of this restriction before the edit - likely before the shoot - maybe before the script was ‘locked’. But movie making’s an art, not a science. If the duration is around the 165 mark (which it seems is required) then undoubtably they’ve had had to make some painful choices to trim and cut, since there’s no way they can script to 165 and exactly shoot for it.
Lol, indeed. If every time this trigger was pulled in an edit happened simultaneously we’d give the world tinnitus! 
)
