Oppenheimer fans making hours-long road-trips just to see IMAX 70mm version

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer was released in various film formats, the rarest being the IMAX 70mm print. There are reportedly only 30 screens worldwide showing the IMAX 70mm version of Oppenheimer, which has led fans to take lengthy road trips to be able to see it.

With televisions getting bigger and better, and some even opting for projectors, many folks can replicate a theatrical experience in the comfort of their own homes. Still, premium large formats like IMAX 70mm are something else entirely. Despite the small number of theaters screening Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm, a report from Variety states that those screenings account for $17 million of the movie’s box office take. One fan even made a 14-hour round-trip journey to catch a 2 pm screening in Providence, R.I. “It was definitely worth it,” he said.

Christopher Nolan has said that IMAX 70mm is the best cinema experience because “the sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled.” However, it’s not exactly easy to bring an IMAX 70mm print to life. In the case of Oppenheimer, it took three days to create each print and two years to “evaluate, reinstall and fix IMAX 70mm projectors” at each theater. The finished print spanned 11 miles and weighed 600 pounds.

IMAX CEO Richard Gelfond hopes to keep 70mm alive and “find more projectors and refurbish them… It’s an art form that’s been fading away. IMAX is all in on trying to keep film alive.” While Oppenheimer‘s IMAX 70mm run has been very successful, it will have to give up those screens to The Equalizer 3 on September 1st. However, IMAX’s global head of corporate communications Mark Jafar says that IMAX 70mm prints last, on average, ten times longer than regular 70mm or 35mm film. “Those prints are assets that we’ll be using for the next 20 years,” he said.

Based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin, the movie stars Cillian Murphy as J. Robert Oppenheimer, the enigmatic man who must risk destroying the world in order to save it. In addition to Murphy, the film also stars Emily Blunt as his wife, biologist and botanist Katherine “Kitty” Oppenheimer, Matt Damon as General Leslie Groves Jr., director of the Manhattan Project, and Robert Downey Jr. as Lewis Strauss, a founding commissioner of the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission. The rest of the cast includes Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Rami Maleck, Josh Hartnett, Kenneth Branagh, Michael Angarano, Dane DeHaan, David Krumholtz, Alden Ehrenreich, Matthew Modine, and many more.

You can check out a review of Oppenheimer from our own Eric Walkuski right here, and be sure to let us know what you thought of the film as well.