Christopher Nolan has used over two million feet of film for his adaptation of Homer’s Odyssey. The man still believes in giving people a theatrical experience — IMAX preferably. Yet he is open to the idea of people experimenting with how they watch films, even if it’s on iPads.

Recently, he was asked by 60 Minutes correspondent Scott Pelley whether he cares if people watch his films on an iPad.
The Odyssey director and Oppenheimer Oscar winner said he doesn’t mind it at all. In fact, he spoke about how he grew up watching films on VHS at a time when the world believed only in theatrical experiences.

“I’m very much in favour and in awe of the easy access that we have now to films, to be able to immerse ourselves in films and film history,” Nolan told Pelley.

He is not worried if people watch his films on iPads. His upcoming film The Odyssey is the first feature film shot entirely on IMAX film cameras. “Big Hollywood would change,” the director told 60 Minutes. “But theatrical storytelling will always survive.”

The Odyssey has been shot on the large-scale IMAX format, which uses more film than standard 35mm cameras. According to Indepth Cine, IMAX cameras use around 337 feet of 65mm film per minute, compared to 90 feet for 35mm. This means the director could have shot around 100 hours of raw footage, which is not an unusually high figure. A log by editor Vashi Nedomansky suggests that Mad Max: Fury Road shot around 480 hours of raw footage, and Gone Girl shot 500 hours.

The director is not concerned that films may one day become a home experience.

“Theatrical film is a very, very unique form of storytelling,” Nolan said. “It’s only about 100 years old, and it represents this very, very mysterious and magical combination of different mediums. It has the communal experience of a stage play, but it has the subjectivity of a novel. You’re both watching a very individual perspective and having a very individual view on the film, but you’re also experiencing it with the audience. It brings these two things together in a way that no other medium has ever done before. That’s what makes it unique, and that’s why it always endures.”