The hardest movie ticket to get this weekend in America was for the movie that audiences have been able to watch at home for years: Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar.
The science fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway grossed $4.5 million from just 166 screens in the US and Canada. Its 70 mm IMAX film presentations sold out in minutes, leading to a race among theaters to add more and people paying up to $300 on the resale market. The average per theater on just those 10 movie screens was a staggering $70,000, one of the highest of the year and bragging rights for acclaimed arthouse films that usually only play on four screens.
Ten years after the film released Interstellar as a special exception at a time when its studio, Paramount, was committed to a digital future, the film is not only coming back but driving audiences to theaters.
“I was very satisfied with the response,” Nolan said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “It’s really thrilling when people respond to your work any time. But 10 years from now, will new audiences come and experience it the way we originally intended to on big IMAX screens and especially on those IMAX film prints? “It’s really rewarding to see that life continues in it.”
How Nolan fought for the film and its re-release
Interstellar was a labor of love, with Nolan fighting against the changing industry tides to harness the film, certain of its value. Like Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper, an astronaut with skills that were obsolete in his dust-bowl reality, Interstellar was made by a celluloid-loving filmmaker at a time when the format was least valued.
“The celluloid film was in great danger. “Digital is taking over everything,” Nolan said. “We had put an enormous amount of work and effort into the IMAX 70mm film format release at the time, it seemed like we didn’t know how much we could do with it. Will be able to do it in time.”
During its run, Interstellar was warmly received and a clear success, but it also had its detractors. Its five Oscar nominations and wins were all for craft. And yet in the decade since, Interstellar has become a true classic, beloved by many. Nolan saw that this was the film people wanted to talk about, telling them what it meant to them and asking if it would ever be re-released. Those grand feelings and sentimental themes of love, family and exploration that were a burden to some are now its most endearing qualities.
Nolan said, “A lot of these people were young people who, it was clear to me, had seen the movie at home and hadn’t had a chance to see it on the big screen.”
While Interstellar has been re-released internationally, in China and at the Science Museum in London, Nolan saw an opportunity and talked to IMAX and Paramount, now under a new regime, about a deal for its 10th anniversary. Regarding a proper North American re-release. The prints weren’t even a day old, Nolan said.
IMAX hardly needed convincing: They’ve marked the anniversary date on the calendar. For years, Interstellar was the biggest request ever on their social channels.
“We’ve seen this coming from the beginning,” said IMAX CEO Rich Gelfond. “It reminded us somewhat of the hysteria around Oppenheimer. But the results far exceeded our expectations.”
Interstellar is now the ninth highest-grossing IMAX release of all time and closing in on eight (currently held by Star Wars: The Last Jedi). The company is currently exploring re-release options in different regions.
What should Hollywood learn from the weekend?
The Oppenheimer effect in capitalizing on the value of film to business was real. IMAX screens accounted for nearly 20% of the nearly $1 billion earned globally for this year’s Oscar Best Picture winner (it ranks No. 5 for IMAX). While filmmakers had long owned film stock, Oppenheimer had studios, distributors, and theaters keeping up with demand. Earlier this year, tickets for Dune: Part Two sold out for four weeks during the film’s release. And there’s more to come: Ryan Coogler’s new film Sinners, due out in March 2025, was shot with IMAX cameras.
The Interstellar release was fairly “low-key” when it came to promotion, but it didn’t need much either – fans made sure of that. Even before IMAX announced that tickets were on sale, some noticed that AMC had made them available. The news spread on social media and overnight, every 70 mm IMAX showing at the Lincoln Square location in New York was sold out. It wasn’t just the “primetime” slot: the 1pm showtime after the weekend was also at capacity. The turnout exceeded expectations, they also added 70mm IMAX screenings during the week, which filled up quickly.
While Nolan is an anomaly in some ways, as the rare filmmaker whose name alone can draw a crowd to original fare, there are some lessons to be learned from the weekend.
Nolan said, “It shows our industry once again that audiences really understand the difference between the communal, big-screen theatrical experience they crave versus the movies they have the opportunity to watch at home.” ” “The theatrical experience we all know and love is so powerful and exciting. It’s a very clear demonstration of that, especially with all the great successes right now, Wicked, Gladiator II, Moana 2.” He added, “Audiences are coming in droves for the experience that we love so much. We do.”
Dreaming big for the future and appreciating the past
Ahead of the weekend, Nolan was able to revisit the film on the big screen with his Oscar-winning Oppenheimer cinematographer Hoyte Van Hoytema for the first time since its original release. Interstellar was their first collaboration and Hoytema introduced IMAX cameras (where he proved they could be handheld if you tried hard enough).
“It was really a lot of fun,” Nolan said. He also approved the new 4K UHD Interstellar set which is now available.
Since Oppenheimer’s big night at the Oscars and Nolan’s Best Director win, there has been a lot of speculation about his next film and almost daily rumors about casting and genre, with no official confirmation on any of it. Has not been confirmed. It’s not something he’s speaking about publicly yet. However, one thing he will say is that he is in the midst of intensive testing of a new film technology with IMAX to use in the next production.
“They have an incredible engineering staff, really brilliant minds doing extraordinary work,” he said. He said, “It’s wonderful to see innovation still happening in the celluloid film field and at the highest level possible.”
And he is still finding time to go to the movies. Over the weekend, Nolan went to see Wicked at a theater in Burbank, where he also saw one of the IMAX presentations of his film. “It was magical to see that movie to a full house,” he said. “It was a very special thing to see this happen 10 years later.”
