“We let the filmmaker decide how they want to make the movie… our job is to give them the tools so that they can make the movie the way they dreamed it would be shown.”
These are the words of Greg Foster, president of IMAX Entertainment. He’s talking about the forthcoming sci-fi epic Interstellar from British writer/director Christopher Nolan.
The film will be one last hurrah for old-fashioned film, as most movies are shot and projected digitally these days, but Nolan is very particular about the way he makes his films.
Old meets new
Unlike many of his contemporaries, Nolan doesn’t like to use 3D, but he loves IMAX. Judging from the quality and visual impact of his recent films, such as The Dark Knight Rises and the amazing, ground-breaking Inception, this is clearly a tried-and-tested method that works well for him.
“It’s very important to Christopher Nolan and Christopher Nolan is very important to us,” said Foster, talking to Collider. Interstellar looks like it’s going to be another visually spectacular film, and viewers will be able to experience the full effect of it by seeing it in a selection of IMAX cinemas around the world, Foster revealed, though the locations have yet to be announced. Paramount, one of its distributors, has already stopped releasing movies on film, but is making an exception for Nolan's latest project.
Film vs digital
Praising the format of using film instead of digital, Alex Billington of firstshowing.net wrote: “I miss the texture and imperfections that only comes from watching a movie on film.” While digital can replicate a moment on screen, he added, “it’s still got a long way to go to recreate the magic of film projection.”
With a screenplay by Christopher and his brother Jonathan, Interstellar is an ambitious film based on the theories on interstellar travel by well-known astrophysicist Kip Thorne. Matthew McConaughey plays one of a group of explorers who leave a dying Earth and use a wormhole to travel vast distances in their search for a new home for mankind.
Interstellar is set to touch down in Cineworld on 7th November, which can’t come soon enough as far as we’re concerned. Watch the trailer below and tell us what you think – would you want to see it in IMAX?
