Following on from the weekend’s news that Oppenheimer, the latest masterpiece from director Christopher Nolan, had crossed the $700 million threshold over the weekend, it was also confirmed that the Cillian Murphy-led retelling of the Manhattan Project and the construction of the atomic bomb had breached the top five all-time IMAX movies in terms of total gross earned in the premium large screen format.
Oppenheimer‘s success on IMAX isn’t a secret, but when you factor in the competition it faced and the movies that still lie above it, it becomes clear what a staggering accomplishment this is for Nolan. The movie has earned a superb $146.4 million from IMAX alone, which represents 20% of its total worldwide gross, and of that $146.4 million, over $17 million of that has come from just 30 screens, which have been showing the film on 70mm print, the format which Nolan has previously declared as the gold standard of cinema.
The movies to have grossed more on IMAX ahead of Oppenheimer? Well, you may have heard of them, given that they are 4 of the 5 highest-grossing in history, namely Avatar and its sequel The Way of Water, Star Wars: The Force Awakens, and Avengers: Endgame. The film has exclusive play in 70mm IMAX theaters through the end of this month before ceding screens to The Equalizer 3, but expect it to return soon after.
Inventing a New Standard
Nolan‘s commitment to filming in IMAX is legendary, to the point that he and his cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema decided to work with Kodak in order to develop new technology to be able to film more intimate scenes in black-and-white for the film. In an interview with Collider van Hoytema explained:
“I very much loved the structural assistance and the aesthetic charge of shifting between color and black and white that I had on Memento. I’d always been looking for a reason to go back to that. And in the case of Oppenheimer and the way in which we tell this story, it’s very subjectively told, but also with a more objective story strand that intertwines with that. It was really the perfect time to go back to that device that I loved so much. So we challenged the people at Kodak photochem to make this work for us. And they stepped up. For the first time ever, we were able to shoot IMAX film in black-and-white. And the results were thrilling and extraordinary. As soon as Hoyte and I saw the first tests come in, we just knew that this was a format that we were immediately in love with.”
via Collider