Interstellar premiered at theTCL Chinese Theatre on October 26, 2014, and was released in theaters in the United States on November 5, and in the United Kingdom on November 7. In the United States, it was first released onfilm stock, expanding to venues usingdigital projectors. It was a commercial success, grossing $681 million worldwide during its initial theatrical run, and $769 million worldwide with subsequent releases, making it the10th-highest-grossing film of 2014. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Among itsvarious accolades,Interstellar was nominated for five awards at the87th Academy Awards, winningBest Visual Effects.
In the mid-21st century, humanity facesextinction due todust storms and widespread cropblights. Joseph Cooper, a widowed formerNASA test pilot, works as a farmer and raises his children, Murph and Tom, alongside his father-in-law Donald. Cooper is reprimanded by Murph's teachers for telling her that theApollo missions were not fabricated. During a dust storm, the two discover that dust patterns in Murph's room, which she first attributes to aghost, result from a gravitational anomaly, and translate them intogeographic coordinates. These lead them to a secret NASA facility headed by Professor John Brand, who explains that 48 years earlier, awormhole appeared nearSaturn, leading to a system in anothergalaxy with 12 potentially habitableplanets located near ablack hole named Gargantua. Volunteers of theLazarus expedition had previously traveled through the wormhole to evaluate the planets, with three — Miller, Edmunds, and Mann — reporting back desirable results.
Cooper is enlisted to pilot theEndurancespacecraft through the wormhole as part of a mission to colonize ahabitable planet with 5000frozen embryos and ensure humanity's survival. Meanwhile, Professor Brand would continue his work on solving a gravity equation whose solution would supposedly enable construction of a spacecraft for an exodus from Earth. Cooper accepts against Murph's wishes and promises to return. Troubled and noticing patterns she interprets asmorse warning (... - .- -.--), she refuses to see him off, he leaves her his wristwatch to compare theirrelative time when he returns. The crew, consisting of Cooper, robots TARS and CASE, and scientists Dr. Amelia Brand (Professor Brand's daughter), Romilly, and Doyle, traverse the wormhole after a two-year voyage to Saturn. Cooper, Doyle, and Brand use alander to investigate Miller's planet, where time is severelydilated. After landing in knee-high water and finding only wreckage from Miller's expedition, a gigantictidal wave kills Doyle and waterlogs the lander's engines.
By the time they leave the planet, Cooper and Brand discover that 23 years have elapsed on theEndurance. Having enough fuel left for only one of the other two planets, Cooper and Romilly decide to go to Mann's planet, despite Brand's protests, as he is still broadcasting. En route, they receive messages fromEarth and Cooper watches Tom grow up, marry, and lose his first son. An adult Murph is now a scientist working on the gravity equation with Professor Brand. On his deathbed, Professor Brand confesses that theEndurance crew was never supposed to return, knowing that a complete solution to the equation was not feasible without observations ofgravitational singularities from inside a black hole. On Mann's planet, they awaken him fromcryostasis, and he assures them that colonization is possible, despite the extreme environment, due to a much more habitable "surface" that Mann's probes allegedly located at a lower altitude. During a scouting mission, Mann attempts to kill Cooper and reveals that he falsified his data in the hope of being rescued. He steals Cooper's lander and heads for theEndurance. While abooby trap set by Mann kills Romilly, Brand rescues Cooper with the other lander and they race back to theEndurance. Mann is killed in a failed manual docking operation, severely damaging theEndurance, but Cooper is able to regain control of the station through his own docking maneuver.
With insufficient fuel, Cooper and Brand resort to aslingshot around Gargantua, which costs them 51 years due to time dilation. In the process, Cooper and TARS jettison their landers to lighten theEndurance so that Brand and CASE may reach Edmunds' planet. Falling into Gargantua'sevent horizon, they eject from their craft and find themselves in atesseract made up of infinite copies of Murph's bedroom across moments in time. Cooper deduces that advanced humans constructed the tesseract in the far future, and realizes that he had always been Murph's "ghost". He usesMorse code to manipulate the second hand of the wristwatch he gave her before he left, giving Murph the data that TARS collected, which enables her to complete Professor Brand's solution.
Having achieved its purpose, the tesseract collapses before ejecting Cooper and TARS. Cooper wakes up on astation orbitingSaturn. He reunites with Murph, now elderly and on her deathbed, who tells him to seek out Brand. Cooper and TARS take a spacecraft to rejoin Brand and CASE, who are setting up the human colony on Edmunds' habitable planet.
Matthew McConaughey, as Joseph "Coop" Cooper,[a] a widowedNASA pilot who reluctantly becomes a farmer after the agency was closed by the government, and eventually joins theEndurance mission as the lead pilot.
Anne Hathaway, as Dr. Amelia Brand, Professor Brand's daughter and NASA scientist aboard theEndurance mission, is responsible for conducting planet colonization.[4]
Jessica Chastain, as Murphy "Murph" Cooper, Joseph's daughter, eventually becomes a NASA scientist working under Professor Brand.
John Lithgow as Donald, Cooper's elderly father-in-law
Michael Caine as Professor John Brand, a high-ranking NASA scientist, father of Amelia, former mentor of Cooper, and director of theLazarus andEndurance missions
Casey Affleck as Tom Cooper, Joseph's son, who eventually takes charge of his father's farm
The premise forInterstellar was conceived by the producerLynda Obst and the theoretical physicistKip Thorne, who collaborated on the filmContact (1997), and had known each other sinceCarl Sagan set them up on a blind date.[5][6] The two conceived a scenario, based on Thorne's work, about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans", and attractedSteven Spielberg's interest in directing.[7] The film began development in June 2006, when Spielberg andParamount Pictures announced plans for ascience fiction film based on an eight-pagetreatment written by Obst and Thorne. Obst was attached to produce.[8][9] By March 2007,Jonathan Nolan was hired to write ascreenplay.[10]
After Spielberg moved his production studio,DreamWorks Pictures, from Paramount Pictures toWalt Disney Studios in 2009, Paramount needed a new director forInterstellar. Jonathan Nolan recommended his brotherChristopher, who joined the project in 2012.[11] Christopher Nolan met with Thorne, then attached as executive producer, to discuss the use ofspacetime in the story.[12] In January 2013, Paramount and Warner Bros. announced that Christopher Nolan was in negotiations to directInterstellar.[13] Nolan said he wanted to encourage the goal ofhuman spaceflight,[14] and intended to merge his brother's screenplay with his own.[15] By the following March, Nolan was confirmed to directInterstellar, which would be produced under his labelSyncopy andLynda Obst Productions.[16]The Hollywood Reporter said Nolan would earn a salary of$20 million against 20% of the total gross.[17] To research for the film, Nolan visited NASA and theprivate space program atSpaceX.[12]
Warner Bros. sought a stake in Nolan's production ofInterstellar from Paramount, despite their traditional rivalry, and agreed to give Paramount its rights to co-finance the next film in theFriday the 13th horror franchise, with a stake in a future film based on the television seriesSouth Park, the second afterSouth Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999). Warner Bros. also agreed to let Paramount co-finance an indeterminate "A-list" property.[18] In August 2013,Legendary Pictures finalized an agreement with Warner Bros. to finance approximately 25% of the film's production. Although it failed to renew its eight-year production partnership with Warner Bros., Legendary reportedly agreed to forgo financingBatman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) in exchange for the stake inInterstellar.[19]
His brother Christopher had worked on other science fiction scripts but decided to take theInterstellar script and choose among the vast array of ideas presented by Jonathan and Thorne. He picked what he felt, as director, he could get "across to the audience and hopefully not lose them", before he merged it with a script he had worked on for years on his own.[12][21] Among the elements from the original script that Christopher removed was how gravitational waves were used for detecting the wormhole—and then regretted it afterLIGO detected gravitational waves just little over a year later.[22] He kept in place Jonathan's conception of the first hour, which is set on aresource-depleted Earth in the near future. The setting was inspired by theDust Bowl that took place in the United States during theGreat Depression in the 1930s.[5] He revised the rest of the script, where a team travels into space, instead.[5] After watching the 2012 documentaryThe Dust Bowl for inspiration, Christopher contacted the director,Ken Burns, and the producer, Dayton Duncan. They granted him permission to use some of their featured interviews inInterstellar.[23]
Christopher Nolan wanted an actor who could bring to life his vision of the main character as aneveryman with whom "the audience could experience the story".[24] He became interested in castingMatthew McConaughey after watching him in an early cut of the 2012 filmMud,[24] which he had seen as a friend of one of its producers, Aaron Ryder.[5] Nolan went to visit McConaughey while he was filming for the television seriesTrue Detective.[25]Anne Hathaway was invited to Nolan's home, where she read the script forInterstellar.[26] In early 2013, both actors were cast in the starring roles.[27]Jessica Chastain was contacted while she was working onMiss Julie (2014) in Northern Ireland, and a script was delivered to her.[26] Originally,Irrfan Khan was offered the role of Dr. Mann but rejected it due to scheduling conflicts.Matt Damon was cast as Mann in late August 2013 and completed filming his scenes in Iceland.[28]
Nolan shotInterstellar on 35 mm film in thePanavisionanamorphic format andIMAX 70 mm photography.[29] CinematographerHoyte van Hoytema was hired forInterstellar, asWally Pfister, Nolan's cinematographer on all of his previous films, was making his directorial debut withTranscendence (2014);[30] Pfister would later retire as a cinematographer for films.[31]More IMAX cameras were used forInterstellar than for any of Nolan's previous films. To minimize the use ofcomputer-generated imagery (CGI), Nolan had practical locations built, such as the interior of a space shuttle.[24] Van Hoytema retooled an IMAX camera to behand-held for shooting interior scenes.[5] Some of the film's sequences were shot with an IMAX camera installed in the nose cone of aLearjet.[32]Nolan, who is known for keeping details of his productions secret, strove to ensure secrecy forInterstellar. Writing forThe Wall Street Journal, Ben Fritz stated, "The famously secretive filmmaker has gone to extreme lengths to guard the script to ...Interstellar, just as he did with the blockbusterDark Knight trilogy."[33] As one security measure,Interstellar was filmed under the nameFlora's Letter,[34] Flora being one of Nolan's four children with producer Emma Thomas.[12]
The Svínafellsjökull glacier inIceland was used as a filming location forInterstellar, doubling for Mann's planet.
The film'sprincipal photography was scheduled to last four months.[28] It began onAugust 6, 2013, in the province ofAlberta, Canada.[19] Towns in Alberta where shooting took place includedNanton,Longview,Lethbridge,Fort Macleod, andOkotoks. In Okotoks, filming took place at theSeaman Stadium and the Olde Town Plaza.[34] For a cornfield scene, production designerNathan Crowley planted 500 acres (200 ha) of corn that would be destroyed in an apocalypticdust storm scene,[11] intended to be similar to storms experienced during the Dust Bowl in 1930s America.[12] Additional scenes involving the dust storm and McConaughey's character were also shot inFort Macleod, where the giant dust clouds were created on location using large fans to blowcellulose-based synthetic dust through the air.[35] Filming in the province lasted untilSeptember 9, 2013 and involved hundreds of extras in addition to130 crew members, most of whom were local.[34]
Shooting also took place in Iceland, where Nolan had previously filmed scenes forBatman Begins (2005).[36] It was chosen to represent two extraterrestrial planets: one covered in ice, and the other in water.[5] The crew transported mock spaceships weighing about 10,000 pounds (4,500 kg).[12] They spent two weeks shooting there,[28] during which a crew of about350 people, including130 locals, worked on the film. Locations included the Svínafellsjökull glacier and the town ofKlaustur.[37][38] While filming a water scene in Iceland, Hathaway almost suffered fromhypothermia because herdry suit had not been properly secured.[12]
After the schedule in Iceland was completed, the crew shot in Los Angeles for54 days. Filming locations included theWestin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites, theLos Angeles Convention Center, a Sony Picturessoundstage inCulver City, and a private residence inAltadena, California.[39] Principal photography concluded in December 2013.[40] Production had a budget of$165 million,$10 million less than was allotted by Paramount, Warner Bros., and Legendary Pictures.[12]
Interstellar features three spacecraft— theEndurance, a ranger, and a lander. TheEndurance, the crew'smother ship, is a circular structure consisting of 12 capsules, laid flat to mimic a clock: Four capsules with planetary settling equipment, four with engines, and four with the permanent functions of cockpit, medical labs, and habitation. Production designer Nathan Crowley said theEndurance was based on theInternational Space Station: "It's a real mish-mash of different kinds of technology. You need analogue stuff, as well as digital stuff, you need backup systems and tangible switches. It's really like a submarine in space. Every inch of space is used, everything has a purpose." The ranger's function is similar to theSpace Shuttle's, being able to enter and exit planetary atmospheres. Lastly, the lander transports the capsules with settling equipment to planetary surfaces. Crowley compared it to "a heavy Russian helicopter."[5]
The film features two robots, CASE and TARS, as well as a dismantled third robot, KIPP. Nolan wanted to avoid making the robotsanthropomorphic and chose a 1.5 m (4.9 ft)quadrilateral design. He said: "It has a very complicated design philosophy. It's based on mathematics. You've got four main blocks and they can be joined in three ways. So, you have three combinations you follow. But then within that, it subdivides into a further three joints. And all the places we see lines—those can subdivide further. So you can unfold a finger, essentially, but it's all proportional."Bill Irwin voiced and physically controlled both robots, with his image digitally removed, andJosh Stewart replaced his voicing for CASE.[5] The human space habitats resembleO'Neill cylinders, a theoreticalspace habitat model proposed by physicistGerard K. O'Neill in 1976.[41]
Gregg Landaker andGary A. Rizzo were the film'saudio engineers tasked withaudio mixing, while sound designerRichard King supervised the process.[42] Christopher Nolan sought to mix the sound to take maximum advantage of theater equipment[43] and paid close attention to designing the sound mix, like focusing on the sound of buttons being pressed with astronaut suit gloves.[11] The studio's website stated that the film was "mixed to maximize the power of the low-end frequencies in the main channels, as well as in thesubwoofer channel."[44] Nolan deliberately intended some dialogue to seem drowned out by ambient noise or music, causing some theaters to post notices emphasizing that this effect was intentional and not a fault in their equipment.[45]
Hans Zimmer, who scored Nolan'sThe Dark Knight Trilogy andInception (2010), returned to scoreInterstellar. Nolan chose not to provide Zimmer with a script or any plot details but instead gave him a single page that told the story of a father leaving his child for work. It was through this connection that Zimmer created the early stages of theInterstellar soundtrack. Zimmer and Nolan later decided the 1926 four-manualHarrison & Harrison organ of theTemple Church, London, would be the primary instrument for the score.[46][47] Zimmer conducted 45 scoring sessions forInterstellar, three times more than forInception. The soundtrack was released on November 17, 2014.[11]
The visual effects companyDNEG, which collaborated onInception, was brought back forInterstellar.[48] According to visual effects supervisorPaul Franklin, the number of effects in the film was not much greater than in Nolan'sThe Dark Knight Rises (2012) orInception. However, forInterstellar, they created the effects first, allowing digital projectors to display them behind the actors, rather than having the actors perform in front ofgreen screens.[5] The film contained 850 visual-effect shots at a resolution of 5600 × 4000 lines: 150 shots that were created in-camera using digital projectors, and another 700 were created inpost-production. Of those, 620 were presented in IMAX, while the rest were anamorphic.[49]
The ranger,Endurance, and lander spacecraft were created usingminiature effects by Nathan Crowley in collaboration with visual effects company New Deal Studios, as opposed to using computer-generated imagery, as Nolan felt they offered the best way to give the ships a tangible presence in space.3D-printed and hand-sculpted, the scale models earned the nickname "maxatures" by the crew due to their immense size; the 1/15th-scale miniature of theEndurance module spanned over 7.6 m (25 ft), while apyrotechnic model of part of the craft was built at 1/5th scale. The Ranger and Lander miniatures spanned 14 m (46 ft) and over 15 m (49 ft), respectively, and were large enough for van Hoytema to mount IMAX cameras directly onto the spacecraft, thus mimicking the look of NASA IMAX documentaries. The models were then attached to a six-axisgimbal on a motion control system that allowed an operator to manipulate their movements, which were filmed against background plates of space usingVistaVision cameras on a smaller motion control rig.[50] New Deal Studio's miniatures were used in 150 special effects shots.[49]
Nolan was influenced by what he called "key touchstones" of science fiction cinema, includingMetropolis (1927),2001: A Space Odyssey (1968),Blade Runner (1982),[51]Star Wars (1977), andAlien (1979).[52]Andrei Tarkovsky'sMirror (1975) influenced "elemental things in the story to do with wind and dust and water", according to Nolan,[53] who also comparedInterstellar toThe Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) as a film about human nature.[54] He sought to emulate films likeSteven Spielberg'sJaws (1975) andClose Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) for being family-friendly but also "as edgy and incisive and challenging as anything else on the blockbuster spectrum". He screenedThe Right Stuff (1983) for the crew before production,[5] following in its example by capturing reflections on theInterstellar astronauts' visors. For further inspiration, Nolan invited former astronautMarsha Ivins to the set.[12] Nolan and his crew studied the IMAX NASA documentaries of filmmakerToni Myers for visual reference of spacefaring missions, and strove to imitate their use of IMAX cameras in the enclosed spaces of spacecraft interiors.[55]Clark Kent's upbringing inMan of Steel (2013) was the inspiration for the farm setting in the Midwest.[21] Apart from the films, Nolan drew inspiration from the architecture ofLudwig Mies van der Rohe.[12]
Kip Thorne, a theoretical physicist and Nobel Laureate, served as scientific consultant and executive producer.
Regarding the concepts of wormholes and black holes, Kip Thorne said he "worked on the equations that would enable tracing of light rays as they traveled through a wormhole or around a black hole—so what you see is based onEinstein'sgeneral relativityequations".[56] Early in the process, Thorne laid down two guidelines: "First, that nothing would violate established physical laws. Second, that all the wild speculations [...] would spring from science and not from the fertile mind of a screenwriter." Nolan accepted these terms as long as they did not interfere with making the film.[9] At one point, Thorne spent two weeks arguing Nolan out of having a character traveling faster than light before Nolan finally gave up.[57] According to Thorne, the element that has the highest degree of artistic freedom is the clouds of ice on one of the planets they visit, which are structures that would go beyond the material strength that ice could support.[9]
The astrobiologistDavid Grinspoon criticized the dire "blight" situation on Earth portrayed in the early scenes, pointing out that even with a voracious blight it would have taken millions of years to reduce the atmosphere's oxygen content. He also notes that gravity should have pulled down the ice clouds.[58]Neil deGrasse Tyson, anastrophysicist, explored the science behind the ending ofInterstellar, concluding that it is theoretically possible to interact with the past, and that "we don't really know what's in a black hole, so take it and run with it".[59] The theoretical physicistMichio Kaku praised the film for its scientific accuracy and saidInterstellar "could set the gold standard for science fiction movies for years to come". Timothy Reyes, a former NASAsoftware engineer, said: "Thorne's and Nolan's accounting of black holes and wormholes and the use of gravity is excellent".[60] PhysicistJean-Pierre Luminet, the creator of the first simulated image of a black hole, praised the warped appearance of the accretion disk but criticized the depiction of the interior of the wormhole and noted that several effects were ultimately excluded from the black hole's rendering.[61]
To create the visual effects for the wormhole and arotating,supermassive black hole (possessing anergosphere, as opposed to a non-rotating black hole), Thorne collaborated with Franklin and a team of 30 people atDouble Negative, providing pages of deeply sourcedtheoretical equations to the engineers, who then wrote newCGI rendering software based on these equations to create accurate simulations of thegravitational lensing caused by these phenomena. Some individual frames took up to 100 hours to render, totaling 800terabytes of data.[6] Thorne described theaccretion disk of the black hole as "anemic and at low temperature[62]—about the temperature of the surface of the sun," allowing it to emit appreciable light, but not enoughgamma radiation andX-rays to threaten nearby astronauts and planets.[63] The resulting visual effects provided Thorne with new insight into the gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes, resulting in the publication of threescientific papers.[64][65][66]
The first image of the event horizon of a black hole, obtained by theEvent Horizon Telescope in 2019. The asymmetric brightness of the accretion disk is well visible here.
Nolan was initially concerned that a scientifically accurate depiction of a black hole would not be visually comprehensible to an audience, and would require the effects team to unrealistically alter its appearance. The visual representation of the black hole in the film does not account for theDoppler effect which, when added by the visual effects team, resulted in an asymmetrically lit black and blue-black hole, the purpose of which Nolan thought the audience would not understand. As a result, it was omitted in the finished product.[67][61] Nolan found the finished effect to be understandable, as long as he maintained consistent camera perspectives.[68]
As a reference, the asymmetric brightness of the accretion disk is very well visible in the first image[69] of the event horizon of a black hole obtained by theEvent Horizon Telescope team in 2019.Futura-Sciences praised the correct depiction of thePenrose process.[70]
According toSpace.com, the portrayal of what a wormhole would look like is scientifically correct. Rather than a two-dimensional hole in space, it is depicted as a sphere, showing a distorted view of the target galaxy.[71]
The teaser trailer forInterstellar debutedDecember 13, 2013, and featured clips related tospace exploration, accompanied by a voiceover by Matthew McConaughey's character, Cooper.[72] The theatrical trailer debutedMay 5, 2014, at theLockheed Martin IMAX Theater inWashington, D.C., and was made available online later that month. For the week ending onMay 19, it was the most-viewed film trailer, with over19.5 million views onYouTube.[73]
Christopher Nolan and McConaughey made their first appearances atSan Diego Comic-Con in July 2014 to promoteInterstellar. That same month, Paramount Pictures launched an interactive website, on which users uncovered astar chart related to theApollo 11 Moon landing.[74]
In October 2014, Paramount partnered withGoogle to promoteInterstellar across multiple platforms.[75] The film's website was relaunched as a digital hub hosted on a Google domain,[76] which collected feedback from film audiences, and linked to a mobile app.[76] It featured a game in which players could buildSolar System models and use aflight simulator for space travel.[77] The Paramount–Google partnership also included a virtualtime capsule compiled with user-generated content, made available in 2015.[78] The initiative Google for Education used the film as a basis for promoting math and science lesson plans in schools.[75][79]
BeforeInterstellar's public release, Paramount CEOBrad Grey hosted a private screening onOctober 19, 2014, at the AMC Lincoln Square IMAX theater inManhattan, New York.[86][87] Paramount then showedInterstellar to some of the industry's filmmakers and actors in a first-look screening at theCalifornia Science Center onOctober 22.[88] On the following day, the film was screened at theTCL Chinese Theatre inLos Angeles, California for over900 members of theScreen Actors Guild.[89] The film premiered onOctober 26 at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles,[90] and in Europe onOctober 29 at theOdeon Leicester Square in London.[91][92]
Interstellar was released early on November 4 in various70 mm IMAX film, 70 mm film and35 mm film theaters, and had a limited release inNorth America onNovember 5, with a wide release onNovember 7.[93] The film was released in Belgium, France, and Switzerland onNovember 5, the UK onNovember 7 and in additional territories in the following days.[94] For the limited North American release,Interstellar was projected from 70 mm and 35 mm film in249 theaters that still supported those formats, including at leastforty-one 70 mm IMAX theaters. A70 mm IMAX projector was installed at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles to display the format. The film's wide release expanded to theaters that showed it digitally.[95] Paramount Pictures distributed the film in North America, and Warner Bros. distributed it in the remaining territories.[29] The film was released in over 770 IMAX screens worldwide, which was the largest global release in IMAX theaters,[96][97] until surpassed byUniversal Pictures'Furious 7 (2015) with 810 IMAX theaters.[98]
Interstellar was an exception to Paramount Pictures' goal to stop releasing films onfilm stock and to distribute them only in digital format.[99] According to Pamela McClintock ofThe Hollywood Reporter, the initiative to projectInterstellar on film stock would help preserve an endangered format,[95] which was supported by Christopher Nolan,J. J. Abrams,Quentin Tarantino,Judd Apatow,Paul Thomas Anderson, and other filmmakers.[100] McClintock reported that theatre owners saw this as "backward", as nearly all theatres in the US had been converted to digital projection.[101]
Interstellar was re-released in theaters on December 6, 2024, for its 10th anniversary, showing in 70 mm IMAX and digital formats.[102][103] At the weekend box office, the re-release grossed $14 million worldwide, boosting the film's total box office figure to $720 million globally.[104] With the re-release, the film also crossed the $200 million box office threshold in the United States, and has gone on to be the highest-grossing IMAX re-release of all time, accumulating $24.4 million at the worldwide box office, as of December 20, 2024.[105][106]
Interstellar was released onhome video on March 31, 2015, in both the United Kingdom and the United States.[107] It topped the home video sales chart for a total of two weeks.[108][109] It was reported thatInterstellar was the most pirated film of 2015, with an estimated 46.7 million downloads onBitTorrent.[110] It was released in theUltra HD Blu-ray format on December 19, 2017.[111]
Interstellar grossed $188 million in the United States and Canada, and $493 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $681 million on original release, against a production budget of $165 million.[3]Deadline Hollywood calculated the net profit to be $47 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs, with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from home media, placing it 20th on their list of 2014's "Most Valuable Blockbusters".[112] It sold an estimated 22 million tickets domestically.[113]
The film set an IMAX opening record worldwide with $20.5 million from 574 IMAX theaters, surpassing the $17 million record held byThe Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), and is the best opening for an IMAX 2D, non-sequel, and November IMAX release.[114] It had a worldwide opening of $133 million, which was the tenth-largest opening of 2014,[115] and became thetenth-highest-grossing film of 2014.[116]Interstellar is the fourth film to gross over $100 million worldwide from IMAX ticket sales.[117][118][119] It was released in the UK, Ireland and Malta on November 6, 2014, and debuted at number one earning £5.5 million ($8.6 million) in its opening weekend, which was lower than the openings ofThe Dark Knight Rises (£14.4 million),Gravity (£6.2 million), andInception (£5.9 million).[120] The film was released in 35 markets on the same day, including major markets like Germany, Russia, Australia, and Brazil earning $8.7 million in total.[121] Through Sunday, it earned an opening weekend total of $83 million from 11.1 million admissions from over 14,800 screens in 62 markets.[122] It earned $7.3 million from 206 IMAX screens, at an average of 35,400 viewers per theater.[123] It went to number one in South Korea ($14.4 million),[124] Russia ($8.9 million), and France ($5.3 million). Other strong openings occurred in Germany ($4.6 million), India ($4.3 million), Italy ($3.7 million), Australia ($3.7 million), Spain ($2.7 million), Mexico ($3.1 million), and Brazil ($1.9 million).[125]Interstellar was released in China on November 12 and earned $5.4 million on its opening day on Wednesday, which is Nolan's biggest opening in China after surpassing the $4.61 million opening record ofThe Dark Knight Rises.[126][127] It went on to earn $41.7 million in its opening weekend, accounting for 55% of the market share.[128][129] It is Nolan's biggest opening in China, Warner Bros.' biggest 2D opening,[130] and the studio's third-biggest opening of all time, behind 2014'sThe Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies ($49.5 million)[131] and 2013'sPacific Rim ($45 million).[132][133][needs update?]
It topped the box office outside North America for two consecutive weekends before being overtaken byThe Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) in its third weekend.[130] Just 31 days after its release, the film became the13th-most-successful film and 3rd-most-successful foreign film in South Korea with 9.1 million admissions trailing onlyAvatar (13.3 million admissions), and 2013'sFrozen (10.3 million admissions).[134] The film closed down its theatrical run in China on December 12, with total revenue of $122.6 million.[135][136] In total earnings, its largest markets outside North America and China were South Korea ($73.4 million), the UK, Ireland and Malta ($31.3 million), and Russia and theCommonwealth of Independent States (CIS) ($19 million).[137]Interstellar andBig Hero 6 opened the same weekend (November 7–9, 2014) in the US and Canada. Both were forecast to earn between$55 million and$60 million.[138] In North America, the film is the seventh-highest-grossing film to not hit No. 1, with a top rank of No. 2 on its opening weekend.[139]Interstellar had an early limited release in the US and Canada in selected theaters on November 4 at 8:00 pm, coinciding with the2014 US midterm elections.[140] It topped the box office the following day, earning $1.35 million from 249 theaters (42 of which were IMAX screens); IMAX accounted for 62% of its total gross.[141] Two hundred and forty of those theaters played in 35 mm, 70 mm, and IMAX 70 mm film formats.[142] It earned $3.6 million from late-night shows for a previews total of $4.9 million.[143][144][145] The film waswidely released on November 7 and topped the box office on its opening day, earning $17 million ahead ofBig Hero 6 ($15.8 million).[146] On its opening weekend, the film earned $47.5 million[b] from 3,561 theaters, debuting in second place after a neck-and-neck competition withDisney'sBig Hero 6 ($56.2 million).[148] IMAX comprised $13.2 million (28%) of its opening weekend gross,[148] while other premium large-format screens comprised $5.3 million (10.5%) of the gross.[149][150] In its second weekend, the film fell to No. 3 behindBig Hero 6 and newcomerDumb and Dumber To (2014), and dropped 39% earning $29 million for a two-weekend total of $98 million.[151][152] It earned $7.4 million from IMAX theaters from 368 screens in its second weekend.[153][154] In its third week, the film earned $15 million and remained at No. 3, below newcomerThe Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 andBig Hero 6.[155]
Onreview aggregatorRotten Tomatoes, 73% of 378 critic reviews are positive, with an average of 7.1/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Interstellar represents more of the thrilling, thought-provoking, and visually resplendent filmmaking moviegoers have come to expect from writer-director Christopher Nolan, even if its intellectual reach somewhat exceeds its grasp."[156]Metacritic assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100 based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.[157] Audiences polled byCinemaScore gave it an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.[158]
Scott Foundas, chief film critic atVariety, said thatInterstellar is "as visually and conceptually audacious as anything Nolan has yet done" and considered the film "more personal" than Nolan's previous films.[159] Claudia Puig ofUSA Today praised the visual spectacle and powerful themes, while criticizing the "dull" dialogue and "tedious patches inside the space vessel".[160]David Stratton ofAt the Movies rated the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, commending its ambition, effects, and 70 mm IMAX presentation, though criticizing the sound for "being so loud" as to make some of the dialogue "inaudible". Conversely, co-hostMargaret Pomeranz rated the film three out of five, as she felt the human drama got lost among the film's scientific concepts.[161] Henry Barnes ofThe Guardian scored the film three out of five stars, calling it "a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare flashes of humour".[162]James Berardinelli calledInterstellar "an amazing achievement" and "simultaneously a big-budget science fiction endeavor and a very simple tale of love and sacrifice. It is by turns edgy, breathtaking, hopeful, and heartbreaking."[163] He named it the best film of 2014,[164] and the second-best movie of the decade, deeming it a "real science fiction rather than the crowd-pleasing, watered-down version Hollywood typically offers".[165]
"It's been a while since somebody has come out with such a big vision to things ... Even the elements, the fact that dust is everywhere, and they're living in this dust bowl that is just completely enveloping this area of the world. That's almost something you expect fromTarkovsky orMalick, not a science fiction adventure movie.[166]
Oliver Gettell of theLos Angeles Times reported that "film critics largely agree thatInterstellar is an entertaining, emotional, and thought-provoking sci-fi saga, even if it can also be clunky and sentimental at times."[167] James Dyer ofEmpire awarded the film a full five stars, describing it as "brainy, barmy, and beautiful to behold ... a mind-bending opera of space and time with a soul wrapped up in all the science."[168] Dave Calhoun ofTime Out London also granted the film a maximum score of five stars, stating that it is "a bold, beautiful cosmic adventure story with a touch of the surreal and the dreamlike".[169]Richard Roeper ofChicago Sun-Times awarded the film a full four stars and wrote, "This is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen—in terms of its visuals, and its overriding message about the powerful forces of the one thing we all know but can't measure in scientific terms. Love."[170]
Describing Nolan as a "merchant of awe", Tim Robey ofThe Telegraph thought thatInterstellar was "agonisingly" close to a masterpiece, highlighting the conceptual boldness and "deep-digging intelligence" of the film.[171]Todd McCarthy ofThe Hollywood Reporter wrote, "This grandly conceived and executed epic tries to give equal weight to intimate human emotions and speculation about the cosmos, with mixed results, but is never less than engrossing, and sometimes more than that."[172] In his review for theAssociated Press, Jake Coyle praised the film for its "big-screen grandeur", while finding some of the dialogue "clunky". He described it further as "an absurd endeavor" and "one of the most sublime movies of the decade".[173] Scott Mendelson ofForbes listedInterstellar as one of the most disappointing films of 2014, stating that the film "has a lack of flow, loss of momentum following the climax, clumsy sound mixing", and "thin characters" despite seeing the film twice in order to "give it a second chance". He wrote thatInterstellar "ends up as a stripped-down and somewhat muted variation on any number of 'go into space to save the world' movies."[174]Matt Zoller Seitz ofRogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, saying that despite his usual quibbles regarding Nolan's excessive dialogue and its lack of a sense of composition, "[Interstellar] is still an impressive, at times astonishing movie that overwhelmed me to the point where my usual objections to Nolan's work melted away ... At times, the movie's one-stop-shopping storytelling evokes the tough-tender spirit of aJohn Ford picture ... a movie that would rather try to be eight or nine things than just one."[175]
New York Times columnistDavid Brooks concludes thatInterstellar explores the relationships among "science and faith and science and the humanities" and "illustrates the real symbiosis between these realms".[176] Mark Steyn commented on the technological future and the focus on the father-daughter relationship.[177]Wai Chee Dimock, in theLos Angeles Review of Books, wrote that Nolan's films are "rotatable at 90, 180, and 360 degrees," and that "although there is considerable magical thinking here, making it almost an anti-cli-fi film, holding out hope that the end of the planet is not the end of everything. It reverses itself, however, when that magic falls short when the poetic license is naked and plain for all to see".[178] AuthorGeorge R. R. Martin calledInterstellar "the most ambitious and challengingscience fiction film sinceKubrick's2001."[179] In 2020,Empire magazine ranked it as one of the best films of the 21st century.[180]
In 2025, it ranked number 89 onThe New York Times' list of "The 100 Best Movies of the 21st Century", based on votes from about 500 directors, actors, and others in the film industry.[181] Readers ofThe New York Times ranked it fifth.[182]
^Berardinelli, James (March 7, 2020)."The 2014 Top 10".Reelviews.net.Archived from the original on August 1, 2020. RetrievedMarch 17, 2020.
^Berardinelli, James (March 7, 2020)."A look back at the 2010s".Reelviews.net.Archived from the original on February 10, 2020. RetrievedMarch 17, 2020.
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