An interesting technical report from Nolan Archive (via Dark Horizons) this morning, for those of you who proper cinema geeks, so into things that go whirr, and clack, and flash. IMAX has made a breakthrough.
The reason a Nolan site has it, is because Christopher Nolan has long been a big champion of ther IMAX premium format, and is also known for liking movies that, shall we say, allow the plot time to breathe.
IMAX are actively developing next-generation 70mm film projectors that would finally allow IMAX movies to exceed a three-hour runtime.
The report says, and you will have to forgive me here because I am about to run out of technical talent very quickly on this subject matter, that current 15/70 units cannot handle this due to physical platter limits.
Nolan’s Oppenheimer used some special techniques to come in at 3 hours precisely on this film.
The new tech, if perfected, could allow movies to be longer than 3 hours.
This could be unlikely to mean The Odyssey is over 3 hours, as this would need rolling out to large numbers of screens in less than a year. Possible? Yes. But unlikely. Still, it could happen, as cinemas can be pretty responsive when it comes to new tech to help fight off streaming.
What could make this a possibility? Nolan has confirmed that he shot 610 km of film for The Odyssey. Oppenheimer on 70mm IMAX print is 18km long. That’s a lot of extra length!
We will get our first proper look at The Odyssey on Friday when a six-minute, IMAX exclusive trailer/clip arrives in theaters.
