Remember when Paramount made headlines (and not in the best way possible) by revealing that the Anchorman sequel was going to be their last feature rolled out on film stock, and that the drive to digital was in the studio’s immediate future? Yeah, well, Christopher Nolan wants nothing to do with that.
The director’s sci-fi thriller Interstellar will be one of a select number of "exceptions" Paramount will allow to its hard-and-fast digital rule, according to The L.A. Times. The paper cites a letter penned by Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures, who states:
"Although we anticipate the majority of the studio's future releases to be executed in digital formats across the U.S., select exceptions will be made."
You know what I want to see more than Interstellar? Footage of the poor Paramount exec who had to meet with Nolan and try to sell him on digital. How long do you think that meeting went? Ten minutes, tops?
It’s refreshing to hear that certain filmmakers have enough clout and muscle with the studios to put their foot down and argue for film. Of course, financially, it’s an industry killer. Digital will be the way of the future, but directors like Nolan, Spielberg and possibly Abrams have the power (for now) to fight for film if they want to. Then again, Martin Scorsese’s The Wolf of Wall Street will go down in history as "the first Paramount feature to be released nationwide entirely in digital," according to Moore.
So Nolan’s film will be released in November in both film and digital. We know that Nolan filmed chunks of his movie with IMAX cameras, but it’s unlikely he’ll allow any parts of his film to convert to 3D (though the idea of taking a trip through a wormhole in Nolan’s film in 3D would sell millions of tickets).
Interstellar stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Michael Caine and Bill Irwin in the story of … well, we’re not 100% sure. With Nolan, few ever are. Here’s the studio’s snyopsis:
Mainly based on the scientific theories and script treatment of renowned theoretical physicist, Kip Thorne. Interstellar is set to be released in November 7, 2014.Nolan and Emma Thomas are producing with Lynda Obst, and Jordan Goldberg is exec producing. Obst commissioned the original treatment and Steven Spielberg came aboard in 2006, when Paramount owned DreamWorks and after the filmmaker became intrigued by Caltech physicist and relativity expert Kip S. Thorne and his scientific theory that wormholes exist and can be used for time travel. Spielberg set Jonah Nolan to write the script, which made it easy for Christopher Nolan to come aboard after Spielberg left the project. The ambition is that Interstellar will depict a heroic voyage to the farthest borders of our scientific understanding."
And here’s the trailer Paramount shared. It tells us nothing, but it looks great… IN FILM!
