Nolan’s Alleged Reluctance
Earlier this month I mentioned that I’d heard “convincing chatter” about Chris Nolan‘s Interstellar possibly debuting sometime during the span of the 52nd New York Film Festival (9.26 through 10.12), “although the most recent buzz says that Interstellar could play Telluride first.” Now I’m hearing that Nolan’s time-travel film, an 11.7 Paramount release, may not…uhm, let me phrase this carefully. So far, I’m told, there’s been a reluctance on Nolan’s part to screen the film for reps of at least one of the hot-shot fall festivals. That means he’s probably saying the same thing to all the other reps. Interstellar is understood to be a very effects-heavy film, but Nolan still can’t play this “not quite ready” game much longer. Interstellar may not be ready to screen for festival programmers right now (i.e., mid-July) and it may not ultimately be ready to screen at the Telluride or Toronto festivals, which span from late August to mid September, but it would have to ready in time to theoretically be the closing-night attraction of the New York Film Festival (i.e., Sunday, 10.12), which would be less than four weeks before the commercial opening. Bottom line: If there was a serious interest on Nolan’s part to premiere Interstellar at one of the early fall festivals (New York being the most favorable in terms of post-production leeway), he would be playing ball at this stage by letting certain persons see it in whatever form it happens to be. But so far he hasn’t, I’m told. Read into this what you will.
