‘Oppenheimer’ Earns R Rating, IMAX Film Prints Are 11 Miles Long and Weigh 600 Pounds

Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” is officially rated R, Variety confirms with Universal Pictures. The film is Nolan’s first for the studio after his lengthy tenure at Warner Bros., where he directed tentpoles such as “Interstellar,” “Inception” and his Dark Knight trilogy. “Oppenheimer” will be Nolan’s first R-rated feature since 2002’s “Insomnia.”

The director confirmed last month that “Oppenheimer” is the longest movie of his career yet, running just shy of the three-hour mark. What does that mean for prints of the film? The Associated Press reports that “Oppenheimer” is so long that IMAX prints are “11 miles of film stock” that “weigh some 600 pounds.” As is par for the course, Nolan shot the movie using large format film camera. Universal Pictures has now made tickets available for the film in premium theaters such as IMAX 70mm, 70mm, IMAX digital, 35mm, Dolby Cinema and more.

Nolan told AP that the “best possible experience” for viewing “Oppenheimer” is in the IMAX 70mm film format. However, that format only exists in 25 theaters across North America. Some of these venues include the AMC Universal CityWalk in Los Angeles, the AMC Lincoln Square in New York, the Cinemark Dallas, the Regal King of Prussia near Philadelphia and the AutoNation IMAX in Fort Lauderdale.

“The sharpness and the clarity and the depth of the image is unparalleled,” Nolan said. “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.”

Large format theaters are also essential to experience the sound design of the film. Nolan movies have been criticized in the past for simply being too loud, but it sounds like “Oppenheimer” might blow the roof off theaters when it comes time to showing the Trinity Test, which marked the the first detonation of a nuclear weapon

“We knew that this had to be the showstopper,” Nolan told AP. “We’re able to do things with picture now that before we were really only able to do with sound in terms of an oversize impact for the audience—an almost physical sense of response to the film.”

Nolan has already revealed he was able to simulate the explosion of the atomic bomb without relying on VFX. “Oppenheimer” follows theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer as he leads the Manhattan Project and creates the atom bomb to end World War II. Cillian Murphy stars as Oppenheimer opposite Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr., Florence Pugh and more.

“Oppenheimer” opens in theaters July 21 from nationwide.

Additional reporting by Jazz Tangcay.