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Interstellar is a 2014 epic science fiction drama film directed by Christopher Nolan, who co-wrote the screenplay with his brother, Jonathan Nolan. It features an ensemble cast led by Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, and Michael Caine. Set in a dystopian future where Earth is suffering from catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through space in search of a new home for humanity.
The film began development in 2006 from a treatment by producer Lynda Obst and theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, and was originally set to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Thorne served as an executive producer and scientific consultant on the film, and wrote the tie-in book The Science of Interstellar. It was Obst's final film as producer before her death. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot it on 35 mm film in the Panavision anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm. Filming began in late 2013 and took place in Alberta, Klaustur, and Los Angeles. Interstellar uses extensive practical and miniature effects, and the company DNEG created additional visual effects.
Interstellar premiered at the TCL 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, with Paramount Pictures distributing in the United States and Warner Bros. Pictures distributing in international markets. In the United States, it was first released on film stock, expanding to venues using digital projectors. It was a commercial success, grossing $681 million worldwide during its initial theatrical run, and $774.7 million worldwide with subsequent releases, making it the 10th-highest-grossing film of 2014. The film received generally positive reviews from critics. Among its various accolades, Interstellar was nominated for five awards at the 87th Academy Awards, winning for Best Visual Effects.
Plot
In the near future, humanity faces extinction due to dust storms and widespread crop blights. Joseph Cooper, a widowed former NASA test pilot, works as a farmer and raises his children, Murphy "Murph" and Tom, with his father-in-law Donald. Following a dust storm, Cooper and Murph discover that dust patterns in Murph's room, which she had attributed to a ghost, result from a gravitational anomaly. Cooper recognizes the patterns as binary code specifying coordinates, which lead him and Murph to a secret NASA facility headed by Professor John Brand.
Brand explains that 48 years earlier, a wormhole appeared near Saturn, apparently placed there by an unknown intelligence, leading to a system in another galaxy with 12 potentially habitable planets located near a black hole named Gargantua. Volunteers of the Lazarus expedition had previously traveled through the wormhole to evaluate the planets, with threeMiller, Mann, and Edmundsreporting back desirable results.
Cooper is enlisted to pilot the Endurance spacecraft through the wormhole as part of a mission to colonize a habitable planet with 5,000 frozen embryos and ensure humanity's survival. Meanwhile, Professor Brand would continue his work on solving a gravity equation whose solution would enable construction of a spacecraft for an exodus from Earth. Cooper accepts against Murph's wishes and promises to return. When she refuses to see him off, he leaves her his wristwatch to compare their relative time when he returns.
The crew, consisting of Cooper, robots TARS and CASE, and scientists Amelia Brand (Professor Brand's daughter), Romilly, and Doyle, traverses the wormhole after a two-year voyage to Saturn. Cooper, Doyle, and Brand use a lander to investigate Miller's planet, where time is severely dilated. They land in knee-high water and find only wreckage from Miller's expedition before a gigantic tidal 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 the Endurance. Having enough fuel left for only one of the remaining 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 from Earth. Cooper watches Tom grow up, marry, and have his first son, who soon passes away, while an adult Murph is now a scientist working on the gravity equation with Professor Brand. On his deathbed, Professor Brand confesses to Murph that the Endurance crew was never meant to return, since a complete solution to the equation was impossible to obtain without measurements from inside a black hole.
On Mann's planet, they awaken him from cryostasis, and he assures them that colonization is possible, despite the extreme environment. 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 the Endurance. A booby trap set by Mann kills Romilly, but Brand rescues Cooper with the other lander and they race back to the Endurance. Mann is killed in a failed manual docking operation, badly damaging the Endurance, but Cooper is able to regain control of the spacecraft through his own docking maneuver.
With insufficient fuel, Cooper and Brand resort to a slingshot around Gargantua, which costs them 51 years due to time dilation. In the process, Cooper and TARS detach in their craft to lighten the Endurance so that Brand and CASE may reach Edmunds' planet. Falling past Gargantua's event horizon, they eject from their craft and find themselves in a tesseract made up of infinite copies of Murph's bedroom across moments in time. Cooper deduces that the tesseract was constructed by advanced humans in the far future, and realizes that he had always been Murph's "ghost". Using Morse code, he manipulates the second hand of her wristwatch to transmit the data TARS collected, enabling Murph to complete the gravity equation's solution.
The tesseract, its purpose fulfilled, collapses, ejecting Cooper and TARS. Cooper wakes up on a station orbiting Saturn. 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 establishing the human colony on Edmunds' planet.
Cast
Matthew McConaughey as Joseph "Coop" Cooper, a widowed NASA pilot who reluctantly becomes a farmer after the agency is closed by the government, and eventually joins the Endurance mission as the lead pilot. Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand, Professor Brand's daughter and NASA scientist aboard the Endurance mission, is responsible for conducting planet colonization. Jessica Chastain as Murphy "Murph" Cooper, Joseph's daughter, eventually becomes a NASA scientist working under Professor Brand. Ellen Burstyn as elderly Murph Mackenzie Foy as 10-year-old Murph John Lithgow as Donald, Cooper's father-in-law Michael Caine as Professor John Brand, a high-ranking NASA scientist, father of Amelia, former mentor of Cooper, and director of the Lazarus and Endurance missions Casey Affleck as Tom Cooper, Joseph's son, who eventually takes charge of his father's farm Timothée Chalamet as 15-year-old Tom Wes Bentley as Doyle, a high-ranking NASA member, and Endurance crew member Bill Irwin as TARS (voice and puppetry) and CASE (puppetry), robots assigned to assist the crew of the Endurance Topher Grace as Getty, Murph's colleague and love interest David Gyasi as Professor Romilly, a high-ranking NASA member, and Endurance crew member Matt Damon as Dr. Mann, a NASA astronaut sent to an icy planet during the Lazarus program
Also appearing are Josh Stewart as the voice of CASE; Leah Cairns as Lois, Tom's wife; Liam Dickinson as Coop, Tom's son; David Oyelowo and Collette Wolfe, respectively, as school principal and teacher Ms. Hanley; Francis X. McCarthy as farmer "Boots"; William Devane as Williams, another NASA member; Elyes Gabel as Cooper Station administrator; Lennart Nowak as Tom's cousin; and Jeff Hephner as Cooper Station doctor.
Production Development and financing The premise for Interstellar was conceived by the producer Lynda Obst and the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who collaborated on the film Contact (1997), and had known each other since Carl Sagan set them up on a blind date. The two conceived a scenario, based on Thorne's work, about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans", and attracted Steven Spielberg's interest in directing. The film began development in June 2006, when Spielberg and Paramount Pictures announced plans for a science fiction film based on an eight-page treatment written by Obst and Thorne. Obst was attached to produce. By March 2007, Jonathan Nolan was hired to write a screenplay.
After Spielberg moved his production studio, DreamWorks Pictures, from Paramount Pictures to Walt Disney Studios in 2009, Paramount needed a new director for Interstellar. Jonathan Nolan recommended his brother Christopher, who joined the project in 2012. Spielberg later admitted that Christopher Nolan had become interested in the project after Jonathan had started to work on it and was told by the latter that Nolan would probably direct it instead if Spielberg were to step away. Christopher Nolan met with Thorne, then attached as executive producer, to discuss the use of spacetime in the story. In January 2013, Paramount and Warner Bros. announced that Christopher Nolan was in negotiations to direct Interstellar. Nolan said he wanted to encourage the goal of human spaceflight, and intended to merge his brother's screenplay with his own. By the following March, Nolan was confirmed to direct Interstellar, which would be produced under his label Syncopy and Lynda Obst Productions. The Hollywood Reporter said Nolan would earn a salary of against 20% of the total gross. To research for the film, Nolan visited NASA and the private space program at SpaceX.
Warner Bros. sought a stake in Nolan's production of Interstellar from Paramount, despite their traditional rivalry, and agreed to give Paramount its rights to co-finance the next film in the Friday the 13th horror franchise, with a stake in a future film based on the television series South Park, the second after South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut (1999). Warner Bros. also agreed to let Paramount co-finance an indeterminate "A-list" property. 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 financing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) in exchange for the stake in Interstellar.
Writing and casting
Jonathan Nolan worked on the script for four years. To learn the scientific aspects, he studied relativity at the California Institute of Technology. He was pessimistic about the Space Shuttle program ending and how NASA lacked financing for a human mission to Mars, drawing inspiration from science-fiction films with apocalyptic themes, such as WALL-E (2008) and Avatar (2009). Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly said: "He set the story in a dystopian future ravaged by blight, but populated with hardy folk who refuse to bow to despair."