One Battle After Another (Paul Thomas Anderson, 2025)

[hearthesilence]

WB is moving the embargo dates up because this is getting great responses in recent screenings. There was some bad intel that this was bombing test screenings but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in current responses.

They clearly took the film away from Anderson, re-shot it, and test screened it with improved results, hence proving the studios' rightful supremacy over these so-called "auteurs."

[therewillbeblus]

Spoiler

Apparently there is some next-level car chase stuff, and a scene with Penn and DiCaprio facing off in that classic PTA fashion that goes on for over 30 minutes. Unless I've been had by people making shit up.

Spoiler

Apparently Penn and DiCaprio only have one scene together (mentioned by DiCaprio and PTA in one of their recent interviews), so that's pretty special if it winds up being such a strong chunk of the runtime

[domino harvey]

WB is moving the embargo dates up because this is getting great responses in recent screenings. There was some bad intel that this was bombing test screenings but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in current responses.

They clearly took the film away from Anderson, re-shot it, and test screened it with improved results, hence proving the studios' rightful supremacy over these so-called "auteurs."

Allegedly, Zaslav was all in on this and very supportive of PTA. Broken watch &c. I guess we’ll see if this ends up being the first DiCaprio movie to lose money at the box office in 30 years

[beamish14]

WB is moving the embargo dates up because this is getting great responses in recent screenings. There was some bad intel that this was bombing test screenings but that doesn’t seem to be reflected in current responses.

They clearly took the film away from Anderson, re-shot it, and test screened it with improved results, hence proving the studios' rightful supremacy over these so-called "auteurs."

Allegedly, Zaslav was all in on this and very supportive of PTA. Broken watch &c. I guess we’ll see if this ends up being the first DiCaprio movie to lose money at the box office in 30 years

I can’t imagine this turning a profit given its absolutely inscrutable marketing.

[Mr Sausage]

They clearly took the film away from Anderson, re-shot it, and test screened it with improved results, hence proving the studios' rightful supremacy over these so-called "auteurs."

Allegedly, Zaslav was all in on this and very supportive of PTA. Broken watch &c. I guess we’ll see if this ends up being the first DiCaprio movie to lose money at the box office in 30 years

I can’t imagine this turning a profit given its absolutely inscrutable marketing.

Yeah, I’ve never seen a film with such tonally divergent trailers. This is a raucous comedy or stone-cold thriller entirely depending on what ad you happen to catch.

[hearthesilence]

I had to double check, but Anderson's films have always had modest grosses. He passed $50 million only once, and it was with There Will Be Blood (which grossed $76 million). I think this is going to be in that longtime tradition of a studio ponying up for an ambitious auteur film in their library the way a billionaire will spend a ton of money to have an Old Master painting on their mantel.

I was going to say it's a once-in-a-blue moon occurrence (like Murnau's Sunrise or Kubrick's 2001 among others) but the streaming wars actually resulted in a whole bunch of costly prestige projects that normally wouldn't have been made (see Scorsese's recent films).

[Guido]

Crossing my fingers that a 70mm print winds up in Montreal, like one did for The Brutalist last year. Besides this list of (apparently early?) screenings, I wonder if there's word on a wider rollout for prints.

[Never Cursed]

Crossing my fingers that a 70mm print winds up in Montreal, like one did for The Brutalist last year. Besides this list of (apparently early?) screenings, I wonder if there's word on a wider rollout for prints.

Yeah, those are only early screenings. For some reason they've been kind of mum about their post-launch-weekend plans for the movie, but they'd be leaving money on the table if they didn't have IMAX prints ready to go for Michigan/Nashville/King of Prussia/wherever (to say nothing about the BFI Imax!). Hopefully it'll be in IMAX everywhere that Oppenheimer was.

in70mm.com claims to have a list of the places that are showing this in VistaVision, by the way, which would ironically be in 35mm

EDIT: How the hell was Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm in 3 places across Alberta and Saskatchewan, but not in Montreal?

[bearcuborg]

I feel like the King of Prussia 70mm run of Oppenheimer had some technical difficulties with the projection-and there might have been fallout from IMAX. I know when I saw it there, the projectionist had his window curtain cracked open-leaving some light hitting the screen for the duration of the movie.

[Mr Sausage]

EDIT: How the hell was Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm in 3 places across Alberta and Saskatchewan, but not in Montreal?

I thought the same thing about the Seven Samurai 4K release. Must be the prairies just never got rid of their tech when it stopped being novel.

[therewillbeblus]

This is a raucous comedy or stone-cold thriller entirely depending on what ad you happen to catch.

Yeah, the tones are wildly different between the trailers, but I'm expecting an interesting mesh following one of Spielberg's comments (not really spoiler-y, but everyone has their own line there):

Spoiler

I have not seen a movie that is so tonally a relative to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove.' This brings a kind of absurdist comedy, taken very seriously, because it’s so much a reflection of what’s happening today, every day, throughout this country. But it takes it to a point where you want to laugh, because if you don’t laugh, you’re going to start screaming, ‘This is too real.’ And so you got that outlet… more than nervously, I had a great time laughing all the way through this. But it’s interesting where you laugh here, where you allow us to laugh, and then when you shut it down.

[yoloswegmaster]

There was a post made by the Sydney IMAX account that said that WB only made one IMAX 70mm print for the international market and that was being prioritized to the BFI. They also did the same thing with the Sinners release, as Vaughan was the only city in Canada that got a IMAX 70mm print. Compare this with the way how Universal's rollout for Oppenheimer and The Odyssey, and it definitely looks like WB is cheapening out when it comes to the creation of prints.

[Guido]

EDIT: How the hell was Oppenheimer in IMAX 70mm in 3 places across Alberta and Saskatchewan, but not in Montreal?

Not 70mm-specific, but I remember when Memoria's roadshow made *multiple* stops across the Prairies and skipped Montreal entirely. It's a sad state of affairs here, especially given that prints are in heavy circulation in adjacent markets (NY, Boston...). There are multiple film schools here, I see kids filling screenings of Salo at the Cinematheque for god's sake, the turnout for The Brutalist in 70mm was great last year, yada yada yada — I really think the demand is there (from francophones too!) but we seem to miss nearly everything.

Anyways, I might have to rent a car and trek out to Boston (where I used to live ) to see OBAA at the Coolidge.

[Marwood]

Could the skipping of Montreal of the films mentioned be because of requirements for the prints to be subtitled in French if showed there?

[therewillbeblus]

Anyways, I might have to rent a car and trek out to Boston (where I used to live ) to see OBAA at the Coolidge.

That'll be a great screening - I've seen almost every PTA there opening night, except for two occasions when I traveled to NYC for an early screening. I think I'll break the streak and hold out for IMAX this time around

[Guido]

That'll be a great screening - I've seen almost every PTA there opening night

We might have crossed paths -- one of my first social outings after moving to Somerville in 2012 was to see The Master in 70mm at the Coolidge! God, I miss Boston's film scene so much.

[Guido]

Could the skipping of Montreal of the films mentioned be because of requirements for the prints to be subtitled in French if showed there?

You'd think so, but then again, we get non-subtitled screenings (and prints sometimes) at the Cineplexes and the smaller indies from time to time. Sorry, this is getting off-topic!

[The Narrator Returns]

This is a raucous comedy or stone-cold thriller entirely depending on what ad you happen to catch.

Yeah, the tones are wildly different between the trailers, but I'm expecting an interesting mesh following one of Spielberg's comments (not really spoiler-y, but everyone has their own line there):

Spoiler

I have not seen a movie that is so tonally a relative to Stanley Kubrick’s ‘Dr. Strangelove.' This brings a kind of absurdist comedy, taken very seriously, because it’s so much a reflection of what’s happening today, every day, throughout this country. But it takes it to a point where you want to laugh, because if you don’t laugh, you’re going to start screaming, ‘This is too real.’ And so you got that outlet… more than nervously, I had a great time laughing all the way through this. But it’s interesting where you laugh here, where you allow us to laugh, and then when you shut it down.

It’s definitely a stew of tones hard to boil down to one thing, in a way that plays both surprisingly accessible (it’s a better mesh of shaggy, ominous late-PTA and an attempt at the mainstream than Licorice Pizza) and an obvious nightmare for marketers. It’s been funny watching the flailing ad campaign after my test screening asked almost exclusively questions about how I would market it, down to asking for ideas for memes.

[therewillbeblus]

FYI, tix finally went on sale for IMAX and standard screenings in Boston within the last half hour

[beamish14]

FYI, tix finally went on sale for IMAX and standard screenings in Boston within the last half hour

VistaVision 70mm in Los Angeles is up, too. Locked in for October 4th

[domino harvey]

70mm in Chicago up as well

[domino harvey]

Ehrlich on Twitter:

One Battle After Another might be the best movie released by a major American studio since I started working as a critic (~2010). distressing how little else comes to mind!

[Drucker]

And AMC Lincoln Square for the New Yorkers. Regal still only one day of sold out VisatVision print though.

[Zot!]

So the 70mm print is that the same as the 70mm print that they will show on some IMAX screens?...and I have to assume they will be doing digital IMAX additionally?

I've bought tickets to the 70mm showing at the Imperial in Copenhagen on Friday as I will be in town for business. Honestly more excited about the 70mm print than the movie but I'm ready to be convinced otherwise! The raves are heartening.

[The Elegant Dandy Fop]

The IMAX print is 15-perf, meaning the image will technically be letterboxed to fit the IMAX aspect ratio. Then there's also 5-perf 70mm for standard 70mm systems.

I managed to get tickets to the LA preview on the 24th on Vistavision. I remember speaking with folk at Boston Light and Sound months back who said they were preparing a projector for Vistavision for new restorations at TCM fest and presumedly they're doing the same for the LA screening at the Vista considering they helped design the projection system there.