With Christopher Nolan back in the minds of cinephiles thanks to the historic run of “The Odyssey,” Disney is hoping to cash in on some of the buzz around him as they re-release his 2006 thriller “The Prestige” in theaters on 70mm and Imax formats for its 20th anniversary.
Released by Disney in the U.S. and Canada via their now-defunct Touchstone Pictures label with Warner Bros. handling overseas release, “The Prestige” stars Hugh Jackman and Christian Bale as two illusionists locked in a bitter rivalry over who can create a superior teleportation magic trick. Presented through multiple flash-forwards and flashbacks, the thriller takes a sci-fi bent as the identities of the two illusionists are thrown into question while their feud takes a violent turn.
Released a year after Nolan broke into the mainstream with “Batman Begins,” “The Prestige” had a modest run at the box office 20 years ago, grossing $109 million worldwide against a $40 million budget.
But as the filmmaker grew in popularity over the years thanks to movies like “The Dark Knight,” “Inception” and “Interstellar,” “The Prestige” built up its own following among Nolan’s global following.
With its Imax debut two decades after “The Odyssey” became the format’s highest-grossing film of all time, “The Prestige” marks a full-circle moment for Nolan. The director used Imax cameras for the first time on this film to test if he could use such cameras on “The Dark Knight” and have the footage be properly transferred onto 35mm film for wide release.
Twenty years later, Nolan and cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema made “The Odyssey” into the first film to be shot entirely with Imax cameras with the help of longtime Imax collaborators David and Patricia Keighley, who worked with him to design a camera that could muffle the motors to allow for dialogue to be recorded. “The Odyssey” now stands as both Nolan and Imax’s highest-grossing film ever with nearly $1.8 billion grossed worldwide and more than $500 million from Imax screens.
