Director Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer will premiere in Prague cinemas next weekend, and the city’s IMAX screen at Cinema City Flora will be the only one in continental Europe, and one of just 30 worldwide, to show the film in the director’s preferred format on 70mm IMAX film.
The event is expected to draw in film fans from across Europe as the only chance to experience Oppenheimer on 70mm IMAX film within the EU. Outside of locations in the United States, just three cinemas in the UK and one in Australia will screen Oppenheimer in 70mm IMAX in addition to Prague.
The IMAX cinema at Cinema City Flora can seat about 380 people, but tickets are quickly selling out. A midnight premiere screening on Wednesday, July 18 is already sold out, as is a 6:00 p.m. showing on opening day. Three additional screenings on July 19 are almost sold out, as well. Tickets can be booked through the Cinema City website.
Due to the film’s three-hour length and the logistics involved in screening the physical film print, Prague’s IMAX cinema can afford just four screenings of Oppenheimer per day, and that’s with the first starting at 10:50 a.m. and the last at 9:50 p.m., with screenings at 2:30 p.m. and 6:10 p.m. in-between.
If you want to make it a double-feature with this summer’s other hot-ticket item, Cinema City Flora will screen Barbie from July 19 in its original English-language version at 7:00 p.m. and 9:30 p.m. (earlier screenings are Czech-dubbed). All screenings of Oppenheimer in Prague will be in the original English-language version with Czech subtitles.
The physical 70mm IMAX print of Oppenheimer is already in Prague, and is was no easy feat to secure it. According to Cinema City spokesperson Denisa Šandová, speaking to Czech Television, negotiations between the cinema, Universal Studios, and IMAX took more than six months.
While Prague’s IMAX cinema has one of the few 70mm IMAX projectors in the world, the cinema had to make sure it was it proper working order, and that its projectionists were prepared to process the Oppenheimer print. Physical film projection has become a lost art as digital versions have become the standard over the past two decades.
“You have to handle the sensitive film print, feed the film strip from the platter to the projector via a system of rollers, load the film into the projector flawlessly and guide it back again so that it is ready for the next playback after the screening,” Šandová says.
“At the same time, it is necessary to have technical knowledge of mechanical principles and electronics. The projector itself is only one part in a complex system of image processing, sound, subtitles, the cooling of all systems, and other parts. Every device can be affected by malfunctions, although ongoing service has confirmed to us that the [70mm IMAX] projector is in very good condition.”
Oppenheimer stars Cillian Murphy as American scientist J. Robert Oppenheimer, a key figure in the development of the atomic bomb. An all-star cast features Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, and Emily Blunt in supporting roles; Gary Oldman plays U.S. President Harry S. Truman, and Kenneth Branagh portrays Danish physicist and Oppenheimer colleague Niels Bohr.
At an IMAX press screening for Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, The Prague Reporter caught a special preview for Oppenheimer with full-frame black-and-white footage flooding the cinema; while this was a digital preview, the images were stunning, and BIG: try to get seats in the back rows to save your eyes.
Prague’s IMAX screen measures an impressive 25×20 meters. Combined with the 70mm print of Oppenheimer, it will project the film in roughly the equivalent of 18k lines of resolution, or more than four times the 4k standard of ultra-high-definition.
“We put a lot of effort into shooting the film in a way that we can get it out on these large format screens. It really is just a great way of giving people an experience that they can’t possibly get in the home,” director Nolan recently told the Associated Press.
“The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled. The headline, for me, is by shooting on IMAX 70mm film, you’re really letting the screen disappear. You’re getting a feeling of 3D without the glasses. You’ve got a huge screen and you’re filling the peripheral vision of the audience. You’re immersing them in the world of the film.”
