At the world’s most important gathering of cinema owners, there is perhaps no presentation more closely watched than that of Christopher Nolan, whom many suspect was born with the big screen experience knitted into his DNA. 

And Nolan certainly charmed the world’s movie theater managers with his words at CinemaCon in Las Vegas this week, comparing their livelihood to his mega-hit, Inception: “I was here some years ago to unveil footage of the film we made about a very fanciful dream-sharing technology, and I think it's taken me these intervening years to realize that there is already a wonderful dream-sharing technology—and it’s owned and run by you.”

Fine minds, pushing buttons

Nolan took the stage during Universal’s presentation to preview a few minutes from Oppenheimer, his big-screen biopic of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, who had a pivotal role in developing the atomic bomb that devastated the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki near the end of World War II. “Like it or not, J. Robert Oppenheimer is the most important person who ever lived,” Nolan told the CinemaCon attendees. “He made the world we live in, for better or for worse, and his story has to be seen to be believed.”

It’s a dramatic, high-stakes tale of paradoxes and ethical questions, said Nolan. “Picture the finest minds in the country in a desperate race against the Nazis to harness the power of the atom in World War II. Picture those same minds realizing that when they come to test that first device, there’s a possibility, however remote, that they can’t rule out that they might set fire to the atmosphere and destroy the entire world. And yet they go ahead and they push that button anyway.”

Going large in (mostly) full color

Oppenheimer, filmed by Hoyte van Hoytema with Cillian Murphy in the title role and a cast including Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie and Emily Blunt, opens on July 21 amidst a blockbuster season stacked with Guardians, Barbies and Kens, Spider-Men, Transformers, Turtles and yet another impossible mission. 

Among these summer cinematic confections, Nolan’s is a heavy, heavy interloper—and that doesn’t faze him. Instead, it’s an invitation to up the Large Format ante, in the hopes that audiences will be encouraged to watch Oppenheimer’s story in the most immersive form they can access. (Indeed, the film is on 200,000 Letterboxd watchlists.) 

“I wanted to be there in that room with him and see what that must have been like. I wanted to take the audience there and to do so, I’ve assembled the most incredible cast and the finest technicians shooting on large-format IMAX film, both color and black and white—not too much black and white, don’t worry!”

Back to charming cinema owners and their customers, Nolan declared himself “extraordinarily grateful” for the imaginations of audiences, and for the access that theaters provide to them. “You are, ultimately, our final partners who are making this film. Films take years to make and we spend a lot of time in the studio arguing about who’s in control. And then we hand the control to you because the projectionist has final cut, as we all know.”