10 Things You Never Knew About Interstellar (2014)

Blind Date to Black Hole

The movie's origin story is literally a setup. Producer Lynda Obst and physicist Kip Thorne got the idea after Carl Sagan set them up on a blind date, the same Sagan who'd previously teamed with them on Contact.

Spielberg Almost Steered This Ship

Steven Spielberg was originally attached to direct Interstellar before Christopher Nolan took over in 2012. Jonathan Nolan convinced his brother to jump in by warning he'd probably direct it himself if Spielberg walked away.

The Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) — a planet-scale array of eight ground-based radio telescopes forged through international collaboration — was designed to capture images of a black hole. In coordina — Event Horizon Telescope, CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

Nolan's Paycheck Was Out of This World

Directing Interstellar paid big. Christopher Nolan pocketed $20 million up front plus 20% of the film's total gross.

Dust storm approaching Stratford, Texas. — George Everett Marsh Jr., Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

Four Years and a Physics Crash Course

Jonathan Nolan didn't just write fast. He spent four years on the screenplay and studied relativity at the California Institute of Technology to get the science right.

This view of the rising Earth greeted the Apollo 8 astronauts as they came from behind the Moon after the fourth nearside orbit. Earth is about five degrees above the horizon in the photo. The unnamed — Apollo 8 crewmember Bill Anders, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.

The Cut That Haunted Nolan

Gravitational waves were in the script at first as a way to spot the wormhole, but Christopher Nolan cut them out. He later regretted it when LIGO detected gravitational waves just over a year after release.

Ken Burns Cameo By Proxy

Christopher Nolan wanted a Dust Bowl vibe and called Ken Burns for inspiration. Burns gave him permission to use featured interviews from his 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl in the film.

Mud Led to Cooper

Matthew McConaughey landed the role of Cooper after Christopher Nolan saw an early cut of Mud and then checked in on him on the set of True Detective.

A Spaceship That Looks Like a Clock

The Endurance was built as a flat circular ring of 12 capsules laid out like a clock face, a design inspired by the International Space Station's modular layout.

Maxatures, Not Miniatures

The crew nicknamed the massive models maxatures. The 1/15th-scale Endurance stretched over 7.6 meters, while hand-sculpted Ranger and Lander models topped 14 and 15 meters respectively.

850 Shots, Zero Green Screen Laziness

DNEG delivered 850 effects shots at a massive 5600 × 4000 resolution. About 150 of them were built in-camera with digital projectors instead of the usual green screen compositing.