Experience TENET on Large Format 70mm Motion Picture Film
After three delays throughout summer due to the COVID-19 pandemic, Christopher Nolan’s long awaited Tenet is ready to open in cinemas across the U.S.
Beginning Monday, August 31st Emagine Willow Creek in Plymouth, Minnesota — 10 miles outside of Minneapolis — will be one of six movie theatres nationwide opening the twisty science-fiction epic on traditional 70mm motion picture film.
In the last week, over one-thousand theatres in the U.S. re-opened as NATO (National Association of Theatre Owners) introduced a strict set of health protocols to keep customers safe. Yet, according to the most recent survey conducted by Performance Research, only 16% of participants stated they’d feel comfortable seeing Tenet during the pandemic. Additionally, Atom Tickets issued a “Return to Moviegoing” survey on August 17, and with 16,000 responses, 40% said they are ready to return to theatres immediately. That number is up from 25% from back in May. 15% stated they won’t return until a vaccine for the coronavirus is available to the public.
With Minnesota’s mask mandates and social distancing guidelines, plus restricted auditorium capacities enforced by all movie theatres, the question remains: would you feel comfortable going back to a cinema to experience a film on a format only a handful of others will have the opportunity to see? Outside of Emagine Willow Creek, the Loft Cinema (Arizona), Coral Cables Art Cinema (Florida), Music Box Theatre (Chicago, Illinois), Coolidge Corner Cinema (Massachusetts), and Gateway Film Center (Ohio) have all been selected to run the film on traditional 70mm.
70mm film offers a brighter, clearer image, with three times the resolution of standard projection formats, using the process of projecting light through celluloid to deliver clear images in rich analog color. Translating a physical material like celluloid into a comparable digital resolution has been debated amongst cinephiles and tech-gurus for years, but the general consensus is that 70mm is the equivalent of 8–12K. To put this into perspective, 2K digital projection is the gold standard of today, with only 20% cinemas across the world equipped to screen content in 4K. The gold standard prior to the digital cinema revolution in 2012 was 35mm motion picture film, which has the equivalent of 4–6K.
Willow Creek is no stranger to 70mm presentations. In 2014, after a 20-year hiatus from running the large format film, they debuted Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar on 70mm, and ended up running the print on-screen longer than any other cinemas in the United States — ten full weeks. Since, they’ve screened 2001: A Space Odyssey, Dunkirk and Joker, among others, on 70mm.
Tickets for 70mm Tenet at Emagine Willow Creek are now on sale.
