Recently, Paramount decided to digitally release all of their films theatrically, but they’ve been forced to make an exception for Christopher Nolan and his new movie Interstellar.
And rightly so. Nolan is one of the only filmmakers in the world to almost guarantee that his directorial efforts will both be huge critical and financial successes (his last five films have brought in over $3 billion at the box office), so Paramount has to play nice with him.
Just recently, January 18 to be exact, it was revealed that Paramount had announced to its exhibitors that the studio would no longer release any movies in the traditional film format. From the point of the announcement, all films would only be released digitally.
Ironically, the last film to be released on film was Anchorman 2: The Legend Continues and the first to be distributed solely in digital format was The Wolf of Wall Street. If we’d have guessed which was on film and which was digital, we’d have the two flipped.
Today, Paramount had to backtrack on their decision. In addition to discussing the success of their digital release schedule so far, Paramount changed the absoluteness of their stance slightly.
“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,” said Rob Moore, vice chairman of Paramount Pictures.
One of the exceptions will be the November 7 release of Nolan’s Interstellar. Nolan is a lover of film, and he often uses the IMAX camera.
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Nolan shot Interstellar in both IMAX as well as 35MM film, and it’ll be released both on film as well as digitally around the country as was normal before the new Paramount mandate.