After that crazy trailer, what IS Interstellar? Just like the title says, here's everything we know about Interstellar in one place.
It may be still almost a year away, but admit it…Interstellar is your most anticipated movie of 2014. And we don’t blame you!
As the first directorial effort for Christopher Nolan since completing his The Dark Knight Trilogy in 2012, Interstellaris the time and space-bending sci-fi that many have been waiting for. Dealing with everything from wormholes to theories of relativity on steroids, this out-of-this-galaxy blockbuster is almost as ambitious in its scope as it is in its secrecy.
....But what exactly is it? If you watched the cryptic trailer from over the weekend, you may have been as painfully confused as the rest of us about what this movie is about (besides space and corn). Join us as we keep you updated revelation to revelation about what lies underneath that studio mist.
Set for a November 7, 2014 release date, the ninth Christopher Nolan film is based on the theories of real life theoretical physicist Kip Thorne. However, it was not initially Nolan’s movie. Originally developed in 2006 at Paramount Pictures by producers Lynda Obst and Steven Spielberg, the project was an intended science fiction vehicle for the legendary blockbuster auteur to one day helm. The trippy and obviously complicated quantum mechanics-themed narrative needed an equally intricate hand, and Paramount found it in March 2007 when they hired Jonathan Nolan to pen the screenplay. Jonah Nolan, brother of Chris, was at the time best known for writing the story upon which Memento was based, as well as co-writing with Chris Nolan the screenplay for The Prestige. Obviously, his bonafides only increased the following year after the juggernaut success of The Dark Knight.
The film remained in development for a number of years, though Spielberg quietly dropped out of the project, as was learned when Christopher Nolan’s involvement was announced. Though still based on the multiple drafts and ideas that Jonathan Nolan hatched for the intended Spielberg film, it was quickly established that Christopher Nolan would be rewriting a new draft of the screenplay that would merge an original idea of his own with the existing sci-fi narrative based around wormholes. Nolan’s involvement also brought along the producing powers of Warner Brothers, as well as Nolan’s own production company Syncopy. Indeed, to get a slice of Interstellar, WB agreed to give up its rights to co-finance the Friday the 13th franchise, as well as its stake in any upcoming South Park movie to Paramount Pictures. Legendary Pictures is also currently negotiating a stake in the picture following the ending of its eight-year relationship with WB.
Beyond the tantalizing premise and the behind-the-scenes hands that have come aboard, one of the most impressive aspects of Interstellaris its deep casting bench of thespian talent. It was first announced in April that Matthew McConaughey would star as the lead in the picture with very few details given about his character at the time. In less than a month, Anne Hathaway and Jessica Chastain were also confirmed to star in the picture. Set photos of McConaughey and Hathaway after what appears to be a troubling sci-fi misadventure below:
Hathaway also represented the first confirmed reunion of Nolan with one of his recurring “troop” of actors, as he worked with Hathaway before in The Dark Knight Rises. Of course, she wasn’t the last as Michael Caine was quickly cast in his sixth consecutive Nolan production. Caine has since let slip that he is playing a college physics professor of some sort. Also cast in the ensuing months were John Lithgow, Topher Grace, Wes Bentley, Casey Affleck, Matt Damon, and Mackenzie Foy. Also worth noting is that this will mark Nolan’s first film since Mementowhich will not feature Wally Pfister as his DP. Pfister has seemingly retired from cinematography at the moment in pursuit of his first feature film as a director: Transcendence, which Nolan and wife Emma Thomas are also producing. Nolan is instead working for the first time with cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema, DP of such films like Let the Right One In, The Fighter and 2013’s Her. But rest assured, Interstellarwill still be the third Nolan film to be partially shot in IMAX (a trick he pioneered for Hollywood big budget cinema in The Dark Knight). Indeed, the man loves IMAX cameras so much that he made hay when he strapped one onto a Learjet. For maximum vertigo, undoubtedly.
However, what exactly is all this technical wizardry and casting wish list in service to? In classic Nolan brother fashion (and really most big budget sci-fi films of late), it has remained incredibly mysterious. Indeed, wrap your head around this first studio-approved official synopsis (the only we have to date):
The new script chronicles the adventures of a group of explorers who make use of a newly discovered wormhole to surpass the limitations on human space travel and conquer the vast distances involved in an interstellar voyage.
Vague enough for you? Luckily, as production began with that same announcement on August 13, details have dribbled out around the edges. Thank goodness for The Fort Macleod Gazette of Fort Macleod, Alberta. The weekly chronicle was the first to report on Interstellar shooting in the area (the film is also shooting in Iceland and Hollywood’s Culver City). In an August write-up, the Gazette revealed that Interstellaris really, at least in part, all about corn. Writes the paper, “Set in the future, corn is the last crop to be cultivated on earth and the scientists embark on a journey through a worm hole into other dimensions in search of somewhere other crops can be grown.” That ties nicely into the first image of the trailer.
In other words, the motivation of our heroes, led by McConaughey as Cooper, the officially defined protagonist, is to find a new inter-galactic location to grow food for a dwindling world population ravaged by the effects of climate change. It is a bold and appropriately topical subject matter for a genre that always plays fast and loose with the issues of the day. Indeed, it is not exactly a revelatory focus when the UN’s World Food Programme is predicting increased “political destabilization” in the next 40 years, as the number of “food-insecure” persons living in agricultural areas of drought and arid climates could increase by as many as 200 million people by 2050. This likely plays into reports that scenes have been filmed that include McConaughey “driving…to outrun a dust storm which eventually catches up to him and overtakes the truck in the town,” as detailed by Interstellar Location Manager Lazlo Uhrik. Enjoy pictures of that shoot, including images of McConaughey, Lithgow, Chastain, and Nolan, below:
Of course, the details of how this will exactly play out—at least for those who have not read the leaked script, which reportedly is a very old Jonah Nolan draft dated when Spielberg was still on the project—remain maddeningly opaque. Though any fan can theorize about the multiple possibilities simply from Thorne’s dense and ponderous work, which in part ultimately suggests that time travel MIGHT be possible if one had technology to master black holes, thereby turning them into wormholes, which could connect two points in time and space—or the same space at different times—for traversable travel through closed timelike curves. However, the ability to travel backwards in time in such a scenario is still even more remote.
But putting mind-numbing theoretical physics aside for a moment, fear not about learning more the secrets hidden within Interstellar, as more will come just as surely as a trailer with actual sci-fi imagery of scientists bending the rules of physics as they traverse the mythical wormhole. Until then, we hope to keep you well cornfed.