Interstellar (film)

= = Interstellar is an upcoming 2014 science fiction film directed by Christopher Nolan. Starring Matt Damon, Anne Hathaway, Emily Blunt, and Michael Caine, the film features a team of space travelers who travel through a wormhole. It was written by Jonathan Nolan and Christopher Nolan, who combined his idea with an existing script by his brother that was developed in 2007 for Paramount Pictures and producer Lynda Obst. Nolan is producing the film with Obst and Emma Thomas.Theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, whose works inspired the film, acted as both an executive producer and a scientific consultant for the film.

Warner Bros., who produced and distributed some of Nolan's previous films, negotiated with Paramount, traditionally a rival studio, to have a financial stake in Interstellar.Legendary Pictures, which formerly partnered with Warner Bros., also sought a stake. The three companies co-financed the film, and the production companies Syncopy and Lynda Obst Productions were enlisted. The director also hired cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema since his long-time collaborator Wally Pfister was busy working on Transcendence, his directorial debut. Interstellar was filmed with a combination of anamorphic 35mm and IMAX film photography. Filming took place in the last quarter of 2013 in locations in the province of Alberta, Canada, in southern Australia, and in Los Angeles, California. The visual effects company Double Negative created visual effects for Interstellar.

Interstellar is scheduled to have a limited release in North America (United States and Canada) on November 5, 2014 and a wide release on November 7, 2014. The film will also be released in Belgium, France, and Switzerland on November 5, 2014 and in additional territories in the following days, including the United Kingdom on November 7, 2014. For the limited release in North America, it will be released in 70 mm and 35 mm film formats in approximately 240 theaters still project the format, including at least 41 70 mm IMAX theaters. For the wide release, it will expand to theaters that will project Interstellar in digital format. Paramount Pictures will distribute the film in North America, and Warner Bros. will distribute it in the remaining territories.

Premise
When a wormhole (which theoretically can connect widely separated regions of spacetime) is discovered, explorers and scientists unite to embark on a voyage through it, transcending the limits of human space travel. Among the travelers is a widowed engineer (McConaughey) who has to decide to leave behind his two children to join the voyage with the goal of saving humanity from an environmentally devastated Earth.

Cast

 * Matt Damon as Cooper[5]
 * Anne Hathaway as Amelia Brand[6]
 * Emily Blunt
 * Michael Caine
 * Allan Tudyk
 * Judi Dench
 * Adrien Brody
 * Topher Grace
 * William H. Macy
 * David Gyasi as Romilly
 * Wes Bentley as Doyle
 * Mackenzie Foy[3] as Murph[7]
 * Timothée Chalamet as Tom
 * David Oyelowo
 * Leonardo DiCaprio
 * Irfan Khan
 * Sophie Turner
 * Geoffrey Lewis
 * Collette Wolfe

Production

 * Christopher Nolan – director, producer, writer
 * Jonathan Nolan – writer
 * Emma Thomas – producer
 * Lynda Obst – producer
 * Hoyte van Hoytema – cinematographer
 * Nathan Crowley – production designer
 * Mary Zophres – costume designer
 * Lee Smith – editor
 * Hans Zimmer – composer
 * Paul Franklin – visual effects supervisor
 * Kip Thorne – consultant, executive producer

Development and financing[edit]
Director Christopher Nolan

The premise for Interstellar was conceived by film producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who collaborated together on the 1997 film Contact.[7] Based on Thorne's work, the two conceived a scenario about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans" that would attract filmmaker Steven Spielberg's interest in directing.[18] The film began development in June 2006 when Spielberg and Paramount Pictures announced plans for a science fiction film based on Thorne's treatment. Obst was attached to produce the film, which Variety said would "take several years to come together" before Spielberg directed it.[19] By March 2007, Jonathan Nolan was hired to write a screenplay for Interstellar.[20]

Steven Spielberg moved his production company DreamWorks in 2009 from Paramount to Disney, and Paramount needed a new director for Interstellar. Jonathan Nolan recommended his brother Christopher, who ultimately joined the project in 2012.[21] In January 2013, Paramount and Warner Bros. announced that Christopher Nolan was in negotiations to directInterstellar.[22] Nolan said he wanted to encourage again the goal of human spaceflight.[4] He intended to write a screenplay based on his own idea that he would merge with his brother's screenplay.[23] By the following March, Nolan was confirmed to direct Interstellar, which would be produced under his label Syncopy and Lynda Obst Productions.[24]

Though Paramount and Warner Bros. are traditionally rival studios, Warner Bros., who released Nolan's Batman films and works with Nolan's Syncopy, sought a stake in Nolan's production of Interstellar for Paramount. Warner Bros. agreed to give Paramount its rights to co-finance the next film in the Friday the 13th horror franchise and to have a stake in a future film based on the TV series South Park. Warner Bros. also agreed to let Paramount co-finance "a to-be-determined A-list Warners property".[25] In August 2013, Legendary Pictures finalized an agreement with Warner Bros. to finance approximately 25 percent of the film's production. Although it failed to renew its eight-year production partnership with Warner Bros., Legendary reportedly agreed to forego financing for Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice in exchange for the stake in Interstellar.[26]

Writing[edit]
Screenwriter Jonathan Nolan was hired by director Steven Spielberg to write a script for Interstellar, and he worked on it for four years.[7] To learn the science, he studied relativity at the California Institute of Technology while writing the script.[27] Jonathan said he was pessimistic about the Space Shuttle program ending and how NASA lacked financing for a manned mission to Mars. The screenwriter found inspiration in science fiction films with apocalyptic themes, WALL-E (2008) andAvatar (2009). Entertainment Weekly said, "He set the story in a dystopian future ravaged by blight but populated with hardy folk who refuse to bow to despair."[21] Jonathan's brother, director Christopher Nolan, had worked on other science fiction scripts but decided to take the Interstellar script and rewrite it with new ideas. Christopher kept in place Jonathan's conception of the first hour, which is set on a resource-depleted Earth in the near future. The setting was inspired by the Dust Bowl that took place in the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s. Christopher instead revised the rest of the script in which a team travels into space.[7]

Filming[edit]
Nolan filmed Interstellar with anamorphic 35mm and IMAX film photography.[3] For the film's production, cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema was hired for Interstellar. Wally Pfister had been the cinematographer on all of Nolan's past films but was not available for Interstellar due to working on his directorial debut Transcendence.[28] IMAX cameras were used for Interstellar more than any of Nolan's previous films. The director had practical locations built to minimize the use of computer-generated imagery, such as the interior of a space shuttle.[14] Van Hoytema retooled an IMAX camera to be handheld for shooting interior scenes.[7] Some sequences of the film were shot with an IMAX camera installed in the nose cone of a Learjet.[29]

Nolan, known to keep details of his productions secret, strove to ensure secrecy for Interstellar. The Wall Street Journal reported, "The famously secretive filmmaker has gone to extreme lengths to guard the script to ... Interstellar, just as he did with the blockbuster Dark Knight trilogy."[30] As one security measure, Interstellar was filmed under the name Flora's Letter.[31]

Part of the filming in Iceland took place at the Svínafellsjökull glacier

The film's principal photography was scheduled to last for four months.[8] It began on August 6, 2013 in the province of Alberta, Canada.[26] Towns in Alberta where filming took place included Nanton, Longview, Lethbridge, and Okotoks. In Okotoks, filming took place at the Seaman Stadium and the Olde Town Plaza.[31] Production designer Nathan Crowley planted 500 acres of corn that would be destroyed in an apocalyptic scene.[21] Scenes involving McConaughey's character and a dust storm were also filmed in Fort Macleod, where the giant dust clouds were created on location using large fans to blow cellulose-based synthetic dust through the air.[32] Filming in the province lasted untilSeptember 9, 2013 and involved hundreds of extras as well as approximately 130 crew members, most of them local.[31]

Filming also took place in Iceland, where Nolan had previously filmed scenes for his 2005 film Batman Begins.[33] The country was chosen to represent two extraterrestrial planets seen in the film: one covered in ice, and one covered in water.[7] A two-week shoot was scheduled,[8] and a crew of approximately 350 people, including 130 locals, worked on the shoot in Iceland. Locations included the Svínafellsjökull glacier and the town of Klaustur.[34][35] After the crew finished filming in Iceland, it moved to Los Angeles, California to film for 54 days. Filming in the state was relatively unusual since California's tax credit was not available for films with a budget greater than $75 million. Filming locations include the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites, the Los Angeles Convention Center, a Sony Pictures soundstage in Culver City, and a private residence inAltadena.[36] Filming concluded in December 2013, and Nolan started editing the film for its release in 2014.[37]

Production design[edit]
The Endurance spacecraft is based on the International Space Station

Interstellar features three spacecraft: the Ranger, the Endurance, and the Lander. The Ranger function is similar to the space shuttle in being able to enter and exit planetary atmospheres. The Endurance, the crew's mother ship, has a circular structure formed by 12 capsules: four with planetary colonization equipment, four with engines, and four with permanent functions: cockpit, medical labs, and habitation. Production designer Nathan Crowley said the Endurance was based on the International Space Station, "It's a real mish-mash of different kinds of technology. You need analogue stuff as well as digital stuff, you need back-up systems and tangible switches. It's really like a submarine in space. Every inch of space is used, everything has a purpose." Lastly, the Lander transports the capsules with colonization equipment to planetary surfaces. Crowley compared it to "a heavy Russian helicopter".[7]

The film also features two robots, CASE and TARS. Nolan wanted to avoid making the robots anthropomorphic or high-tech and chose a five-foot quadrilateral design. The director said, "It has a very complicated design philosophy. It's based on mathematics. You've got four main blocks and they can be joined in three ways. So you have three combinations you follow. But then within that, it subdivides into a further three joints. And all the places we see lines, those can subdivide further. So you can unfold a finger, essentially, but it's all proportional." Actor Bill Irwin voiced and physically controlled both robot designs, but his person was digitally removed from the film and his voicing for CASE was replaced.[7]

Sound[edit]
Sound editor Richard King supervised the sound editing for Interstellar, and sound engineers Gregg Landaker and Gary Rizzo mixed the sound for the film.[38] Christopher Nolan said he sought to maximize the technical capability of the sound mix using current equipment in theaters.[39] The studio's website said, "The sound on Interstellar has been specially mixed to maximize the power of the low end frequencies in the main channels as well as in the sub woofer channel."[40]

Music[edit]
Composer Hans Zimmer, who scored Nolan's Batman film trilogy, is scoring Interstellar. Zimmer and Nolan plan to move away from the trilogy's scores and to come up with a unique one. Zimmer said, "The textures, the music, and the sounds, and the thing we sort of created has sort of seeped into other people's movies a bit, so it's time to reinvent. The endless string [ostinatos] need to go by the wayside, the big drums are probably in the bin."[41] Zimmer also said that Nolan did not provide him a script or any plot details for writing music for the film and instead gave the composer "one page of text" that "had more to do with [Zimmer's] story than the plot of the movie".[42] Nolan said he told Zimmer, "I said, 'I am going to give you an envelope with a letter in it. One page. It's going to tell you the fable at the center of the story. You work for one day, then play me what you have written," and he embraced what Zimmer composed. Zimmer conducted 45 scoring sessions for Interstellar, which was three times more than for Inception.[21]

Visual effects[edit]
The visual effects company Double Negative, which developed visual effects for Nolan's 2010 film Inception, worked on Interstellar.[43] Visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin said the number of visual effects in the film were not much greater than Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises or Inception but that for Interstellar, Double Negative created the effects at the beginning and used digital projectors to display the effects so the actors would be filmed against them instead of green screen.[7]

Influences[edit]
Director Christopher Nolan said influences on Interstellar included the "key touchstones" of science fiction cinema Metropolis (1927), A Space Odyssey (1968), and Blade Runner (1982).[44] Nolan said about 2001, "The movies you grow up with, the culture you absorb through the decades, becomes part of your expectations while watching a film. So you can't make any film in a vacuum. We're making a science-fiction film... You can't pretend 2001 doesn't exist when you're making Interstellar." He also said Star Wars (1977) and Alien (1979) influenced Interstellar 's production design, "Those always stuck in my head as being how you need to approach science-fiction. It has to feel used — as used and as real as the world we live in."[45] The director sought to emulate films like Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977). He said of the films, "When you say you're making a family film, it has all these pejorative connotations that it'll be somehow soft. But when I was a kid, these were family films in the best sense, and they were as edgy and incisive and challenging as anything else on the blockbuster spectrum. I wanted to bring that back in some way." Nolan also highlighted the space drama The Right Stuff (1983) as an example to follow, having screened it for the crew before production.[7]

Scientific accuracy[edit]
Kip Thorne worked as a scientific consultant for the film to ensure the depictions of wormholes and relativity were as scientifically accurate as possible. Thorne noted, "For the depictions of the wormholes and the black hole, we discussed how to go about it, and then I worked out the equations that would enable tracing of light rays as they traveled through a wormhole or around a black hole, so what you see is based onEinstein's General relativity equations."[46]

Marketing[edit]
The teaser trailer for Interstellar debuted on December 14, 2013 and featured clips related to space exploration, accommodated by a voiceover by Matthew McConaughey as his character.[47] The theatrical trailer debuted on May 5, 2014 at the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater at the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C.[48] It was made available online later in the month, and for the week ending May 19, it had the most viewings for a trailer with over 19.5 million views on YouTube.[49]

Director Christopher Nolan and actor Matthew McConaughey made first-time appearances at Comic-Con in July 2014 to promote Interstellar. The Hollywood Reporter said prior to Nolan's appearance, the director had "not spoken about his new movie at all" to keep details secret.[50] The pair participated in a brief discussion and screened a new trailer of the film.[51]

Paramount Pictures launched a complex interactive website in July 2014.[52] The Hollywood Reporter said the website was "both cryptic and, just maybe, filled with hidden meaning". It reported that online users uncovered a star chart related to the Apollo 11 moon landing.[53] By the following October, the studio pursued a new marketing strategy by partnering with Google to create a digital hub.[54] The relaunched website helped visitors navigate theater locations and schedules to learn about seeing Interstellar in certain formats; the site also debuted the film's final trailer.[55] It also provided navigation of film-related content across Google platforms, collected feedback from film audiences, and linked to a mobile app.[54] The app, initially released by Paramount Digital Entertainment in September 2014, featured a game in which players could build solar system models and use a flight simulator for space travel.[56]

Paramount is providing a virtual reality walkthrough of the Endurance spacecraft with Oculus Rift technology and is hosting the walkthrough in four theaters sequentially (in New York City, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, DC, respectively) from October 6, 2014 through December 6, 2014.[57] The publisher Running Press will release Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space, a book by Mark Cotta Vaz about the making of the film, on November 11, 2014.[58] On November 7, 2014, W. W. Norton & Company will release The Science of Interstellar, a book by Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist who was a scientific adviser and executive producer for Interstellar.[59]

Theatrical run[edit]
Interstellar is scheduled to have a limited release in North America (United States and Canada) on November 5, 2014 and a wide release on November 7, 2014.[60] The film will also be released in Belgium, France, and Switzerland on November 5, 2014 and in additional territories in the following days, including the United Kingdom on November 7, 2014.[61] For the limited release in North America, it will be released in 70 mm and35 mm film formats in approximately 240 theaters that still project the format, including at least 41 70 mm IMAX theaters.[nb 3] A 70 mm IMAX projector was installed at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California to display the format. For the wide release, it will expand to theaters that will project Interstellar in digital format.[55] Paramount Pictures will distribute the film in North America, and Warner Bros. will distribute it in the remaining territories.[3]

Interstellar is an exception to Paramount Pictures's goal to stop releasing films on film stock and instead distribute in digital format, with part of the film screenings being projected on film format.[62] The Hollywood Reporter said the initiative to project Interstellar on film format helped preserve an endangered format,[55] which is a goal for Christopher Nolan, J. J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, and other filmmakers.[63]The trade magazine said several theater owners saw the initiative as backward since nearly all theaters in the United States were converted to project in digital format.[64]

Box office forecast[edit]
In North America, Interstellar and Big Hero 6 will open the same weekend of November 7–9, 2014. Each film is forecast to open with between $55 million and $60 million. TheWrap said the pairing was "potentially a close race" to rank first. It said Interstellar would appeal to men while Big Hero 6 would appeal to families.[65]

Accolades[edit]
Interstellar was nominated for Original Score for the Hollywood Music in Media Awards, contending with six other films. The advisory board received a five-minute trailer for the film that included Zimmer's music.[66]