Interstellar's IMAX rerelease has been punted to December

Christopher Nolan cemented his status as the crown prince of IMAX with his record-breaking Oppenheimer run, but fans will have to wait a while longer to see Interstellar on the biggest screen around. But wait, you might be thinking. Wasn’t IMAX supposed to screen Interstellar in 70mm literally next month? Well, as Cooper’s (Matthew McConaughey) interpretation of Murphy’s law proclaims, “whatever can happen, will happen,” and something certainly happened here. That being said, the what of it all may take a little interdimensional Morse code to piece together.

This afternoon, after growing speculation, Variety reported that the 10th-anniversary rerelease has been pushed out to December 6. The initial, September 27 re-release of Nolan’s beloved 2014 epic about an astronaut who sets out to save humanity was first announced back in April, to much cinephile fanfare. As of this afternoon, the rerelease was not listed among IMAX’s slate of upcoming films, raising alarm among fans and sparking rumors that the studio took a few hours to put out. 

But… why? As of this writing, neither Paramount, IMAX, nor Christopher Nolan’s Syncopy Inc. production company have responded to The A.V. Club‘s requests for comment on this story. It is notable that Francis Ford Coppola’s Megalopolis is currently scheduled for a September 27 premiere—the same date originally slated for Interstellar—with Joker: Folie à Deux following in close succession on October 4. This may have just been a matter of prioritizing screens for new releases.

Per Variety’s report, unnamed studio sources dispute the rumor that was floating around social media. Today, a Twitter/X post from an account called “Christopher Nolan Art & Updates” went viral with a pretty incendiary allegation: Paramount destroyed almost all of its 70mm prints without Nolan’s knowledge, the account claimed, effectively canceling the release and leaving the director “furious.” “The only currently existing prints are with theaters that have the space to keep a massive print themselves in storage,” the post claims, but notes that there won’t be “much ‘official’ about those runs.” (An IMAX theater in Melbourne still seems to have their print, for example, but are advertising its run as merely a part of their “Spacetember Film Festival.”) The tweet also claims that Nolan asked Paramount to fund the production of new prints themselves, but they refused. 

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

However, Paramount claimed to the trade outlet that they actually have more copies of Interstellar stored than most other movies, but that it’s common for film reels to be worn out and unusable after their initial run. The film will also be rereleased in digital screenings.

While it’s undeniably fortunate that the reels exist for this rerelease, there is a sad precedent for this type of physical media erasure. The BBC used to regularly discard old reels and archival footage to free up space or reuse the same tapes, leading to the disappearance of large swaths of content like Doctor Who‘s infamous 1960s “Missing Episodes.” The same fate would have befallen the first season of Monty Python’s Flying Circus if the cast hadn’t smuggled out the recordings and made VHS copies themselves. Just this past June, it even happened to the digital archives of longtime Comedy Central programs like The Daily Show, The Colbert Report, and more at the behest of, well, Paramount. Hmm.

This story has been updated in light of the news of Interstellar’s December release date.