The tremendous box-office success of the three-hour biopic Oppenheimer raised some long-term questions in Hollywood about the viability of adult-centric entertainment — but in the short term, it prompted studios to look for ways to cash in on Christopher Nolan fever. In February, Warner Bros. rereleased Nolan’s time-travel spy movie Tenet. Then Paramount took the CinemaCon stage in May to announce a revival IMAX run of the director’s 2014 space odyssey Interstellar — a plan that is still in place, despite rumors to the contrary. The film is set to hit theaters this December, Polygon can confirm.
On Wednesday, gossip swirled that the Interstellar plans might have drifted into a black hole some time over the summer due to studio negligence. In a post dropped on the BoxOfficeTheory forums, then widely circulated on Reddit and X, user misterpepp claimed that the rerelease scheduled for Sept. 27, the original day announced at CinemaCon, “has likely been cancelled outside of a very select group of venues” due to “drama.” According to misterpepp, after Interstellar’s theatrical run, Paramount “destroyed all of the original IMAX 70mm prints,” and the only remaining reels of the movie are stored with theaters who held onto them out of hope for future exhibition. “Chris Nolan didn’t approve of this,” the forum poster claims, “so now he’s furious.”
According to current rumours, Paramount has destroyed its 70mm IMAX prints of Interstellar. The September re-release could be scrapped or limited to theaters that still have a print to show. pic.twitter.com/v8a08vtHUw
— Christopher Nolan Art & Updates (@NolanAnalyst) August 7, 2024
The screencapped comments sent cinephiles into a tailspin. But after hours of Getting Mad Online, Paramount and IMAX officially clarified the plans for the rerelease, complete with a new release date. Interstellar will now hit theaters on Dec. 6. Both 70mm IMAX and digital showings are currently planned, Polygon can confirm.
As for the suggestion that Paramount scrapped its own Interstellar 70mm prints, the studio offered no comment to Polygon. Sources close to the studio told Variety the rumors aren’t true, and that while wear and tear has left some prints unfit for theatrical projection, the studio archive maintains more large-scale copies of the film than most of its other titles.
Interstellar, which gave us Matthew McConaughey crying memes, a dope-ass Hans Zimmer score, some truly stunning VFX shots of gravitational lensing, and TARS, one of the great modern movie robots, currently stands as Nolan’s fifth highest grossing movie, having grossed $647 million worldwide. That number will certainly creep up when Interstellar plays again for Nolan’s fellow IMAX film-stock sickos this December.
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