Christopher Nolan on ‘Interstellar’s’ cosmic success 10 years later

The hardest movie ticket to get this weekend was for a film audiences have been able to watch at home for years: Christopher Nolan’s “Interstellar.”

The science fiction epic starring Matthew McConaughey and Anne Hathaway earned $4.5 million from only 166 screens in the U.S. and Canada. Its 70mm IMAX film presentations sold out in minutes, leaving theaters scrambling to add more and people paying up to $300 on the re-sale market. Those 10 film screens alone had a staggering $70,000 per theater average, one of the highest of the year and usually the bragging rights of acclaimed arthouse movies playing on only four screens.

Ten years after “Interstellar” was given a film release as a special exception at time when its studio, Paramount, was committing to a digital future, film is not only back but driving audiences to theaters.

“I was just so gratified by the response,” Nolan said in an exclusive interview with The Associated Press. “It’s really thrilling when people respond to your work at any point. But 10 years later, to have new audiences coming and experiencing it in the way that we’d originally intended it on the big IMAX screens and in particular on those IMAX film prints? It’s really rewarding to see that it continues to have a life.”