Talk about an incentive…

Revered filmmaker Christopher Nolan is a huge fan of physical film. In an age when most young filmmakers have embraced the digital format, Nolan has aligned himself with other beloved directors like Steven Spielberg, Quentin Tarantino, Paul Thomas Anderson, and J.J. Abrams to take a stand and say that 35mm and 70mm film needs to remain a viable option in Hollywood. Nolan believes in film so much that he’s giving theaters nationwide that still have film projectors- as opposed to digital ones- access to his new film Dunkirk two days early so they can get a jump on their competition.

Indie Revolver has exclusively reported that Nolan plans on giving Dunkirk an advanced release date reserved only for theaters that can handle 70mm prints of the film. It’s a move he did once before with Interstellar. When that film came out in 2014, he sent it out to 240 theaters in 77 markets, and gave them a two day head start. This means that if you have a qualifying theater in your market you’ll have a chance to catch Dunkirk on July 19, instead of July 21 with the rest of the peasants.

Nolan came under fire for doing this with Interstellar, as most modern theaters spent a ton of money to update their facilities with the latest technology. So for Nolan to, in essence, “punish” them for not having 70mm projectors seemed unfair to theater owners who had poured lots of resources into renovations and updates. “This devalues what we’ve done. I can’t afford to get the projectors out of the warehouse for two days, and I don’t even have anyone to operate them,” said Joe Paletta, the CEO and founder of a Georgia chain called Spotlight Theatres, in 2014. 

You can probably expect a similar backlash when the Dunkirk move is publicly announced.

Dunkirk, Nolan’s World War II epic, will feature the sizable talents of Tom Hardy, Mark Rylance, Cillian Murphy, and Kenneth Branagh. 

Just for fun, I’ll leave you with this link for my review of Interstellar. Why, you ask? Because I found out earlier this year that an excerpt from this review was used in the writer’s guide book “Writing Outstanding Opinion Pieces” by Nancy Loewen, and that cracks me up:

READ: “Film Review: INTERSTELLAR“

SOURCE: Indie Revolver