Not long ago, cinemas all over the world were assaulted by fans of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to see the latest Avengers movie, “Infinity War”. It is widely called the “most ambitious crossover in history”, and duly so – it reunites characters from a variety of Marvel franchises into a single movie. But it has one major shortcoming – although the story seems well rounded out and done with – for the time being at least – it is not the end of the story. To see it, moviegoers will have to wait another year – a practice that drives some people insane. It is a lot like placing a bet on Spin Palace online roulette and being told to return tomorrow to see if you won. It’s not the best feeling in the world.

Over the years, many studios have chosen to split up their films – and the reason for it usually had nothing to do with with the epic proportions of the story to be told (except maybe in the case of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, where the story is simply too big to be covered in a single film without cannibalizing it completely). Movies are often split up into multiple parts because the studios are seeking to increase their ticket sales and their revenues. And Avengers: Infinity War is not the only movie that has suffered this kind of treatment. Over the last decade, there were many movies that did the same.

Make no mistake – there are movies that are better released in multiple parts rather than being cut down to fit a long story into the limited runtime of a feature film. Quentin Tarantino’s “Kill Bill” is such an example: instead of cutting it shorter, the director decided to shoot two films that were ultimately released six months apart. Gangs of Wasseypur was also shot as a single movie but no Indian cinema wanted to screen it as a 315-minute long epic so it was divided into two parts. But the length of the movie or the complexity of the story is not the reason why some other films are split up.

“Breaking Dawn” was the last chapter of the Twilight saga that, apparently to make the most of the public’s enthusiasm about the series, was split into two feature films – Part 1 was released in November 2011 and Part 2, one year later. The same happened in the case of the final Harry Potter movie – it was split in two and released one year apart. The same was done to Allegiant, the conclusion of the “Divergent” series, was also split up – the first part, in turn, had a dismal box office performance so the second part was not even released.

When movies are split because the story they want to tell is too long to be crammed into a single movie viewer can be thankful – but when they are split to make them pay more, it is pure evil.