Christopher Nolan didn’t release a movie this year, so theaters are bringing back one of his old ones to compensate. Interstellar was set to return to theaters next month but will instead be delayed until December, Variety reports.
The 2014 space epic starring Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, and Jessica Chastain will hit theaters again on December 6 instead of September 27 as originally planned. The revival marks the 10th anniversary of Nolan’s ninth movie and will include 70mm IMAX showings.
Interstellar tracks astronauts on a mission to find a new habitable planet for Earth’s remaining residents to flee to. It’s a movie about the destruction of the planet and the power of love, and one of Nolan’s more emotional and human projects. It’s the only time he’s worked with McConaughey, and the actor gave one of his best performances in it at the peak of the McConaissance (Dallas Buyer’s Club was a year earlier).
So why the delay? “The theatrical release date was pushed to align with the home entertainment relaunch,” Variety reports. I have no idea what that really means since Interstellar is already available at home, but the publication says Paramount disputes recent rumors that the shift was due to lost or destroyed copies of the original 70mm reels.
Instead, Paramount says it has plenty of archived copies of the movie, but that some film reels experience wear and tear from standard use. The company adds that it’s normal for them to become unusable after their original theatrical runs. I guess Paramount just didn’t want to get clobbered by Transformers One at the box office that month.
Whatever the case, it’ll be worth it to wait a few extra months so fans can once again witness one of the coolest space sequences in film on the big screen. It’ll also be interesting to reappraise one of Nolan’s headiest movies (he co-wrote it with his brother, Jonathan Nolan). A recent viral TikTok popularized an entirely inverted interpretation of the movie that’s full of holes but fun to contemplate on a re-watch.