Director of Photography Department of Huayu

Chapter 698 Interstellar Travel Day

At nine o'clock in the morning, a large crowd began to stir beneath the massive spherical building of the National Science and Technology Museum.

"It's open! The door's open!"

The security personnel maintaining order shouted at the top of their lungs:

"Please don't push! Show your reservation information over there to collect your movie tickets, which are special commemorative tickets."

Tickets are free, but the sense of occasion must be maximized.

"Oh, yeah!"

A burst of excited cheers erupted from the crowd, and they surged forward.

Of course, other top-tier IMAX cinemas in Beijing, such as Wanda Cinema CBD, are in the same situation.

However, as the official main venue, the science and technology museum has a stronger sense of ceremony and is more attractive.

The doors of Wanda Cinema CBD store slowly opened, and a crowd surged in.

Universal has really gone all out this time. Although only the ten-minute clip can be seen in IMAX 3D theaters, various movie-themed display boards and models have been set up in the lobbies of major cinemas.

The life-size model of the "Endurance" spacecraft became the focus of everyone's group photos.

Wearing a baseball cap, Feng Xiaogang mingled in the crowd, looking at the lively scene before him, feeling a mix of emotions.

His assistant next to him muttered quietly:
"Director Feng, this production is amazing! It's even more spectacular than Avatar back in the day."

"What do you know?" Feng Xiaogang muttered twice.

"Back when Avatar was released, nobody knew what IMAX 3D was. Now everyone knows, so naturally there are more people."

He said this, but his heart ached a little, so he could only pull his hat brim down even further.

The movie is played every half hour in the theater, and it keeps playing on a loop.

The first screenings have already begun.

The lights in the IMAX theater went out on time.

On the giant screen, a line of text appeared:

"For the next ten minutes, forget you're in a movie theater. Welcome to the edge of the universe."

The signature is Wu Chen.

The level of sophistication instantly skyrockets.

Feng Xiaogang sat in the corner of the last row, thinking to himself that when he made his own film, he would have to include a line like that, just to show off.

When the audience put on 3D glasses, the world before their eyes instantly changed.

Suddenly, a deafening roar of engines enveloped everything from all directions, and the instrument panel and various parts of the spaceship's cockpit seemed to break through the screen and float in front of him;
Everyone felt their heart skip a beat.

They were no longer sitting in a movie theater, but actually sitting in that spaceship called "Resilience"!
The spaceship shook violently, and a screw seemed to fall off the instrument panel, spinning and flying straight toward his face!

"Fuck me!"

Several audience members around Feng Xiaogang instinctively gasped and leaned back sharply.

He was startled, his body stiffened, and he watched as the screw was grabbed by a hand wearing a space gloved an inch from his nose.

It is Liu Yifei who plays Dr. Brand.

"Entering the wormhole!"

As the tense countdown began, the entire world outside the screen seemed to twist and spin! Time and space were stretched and folded at this moment, turning into bizarre and colorful bands of light.

The audience felt as if they had been thrown into a washing machine, with countless shattered stars and fragments of light and shadow, mixed with spaceship parts, rushing past their ears, in front of their eyes, and even inside their bodies!

That overwhelming feeling was so real.
When the spaceship finally burst out of the wormhole and arrived in a completely new galaxy, a collective gasp filled the theater.

A massive planet with dazzling rings floats silently in the dark universe.

Beside it, an even larger, ominous black hole—Gargantua—is slowly rotating, its gravity visibly distorting even the starlight behind it.

The scene was breathtakingly beautiful, yet terrifyingly chilling. But it only lasted a few seconds before the scene abruptly changed, as if deliberately designed to keep everyone in suspense.

"Wow, couldn't you have shown it for a few more seconds?"

"Yeah, I was just getting into it when it was over! I'm so tired."

"Wow, native 3D! The visuals are so much better than those low-quality 3D movies. But with this, I feel like the tickets for the later episodes will be hard to get."

"."

The ten-minute segment felt like a fleeting moment to everyone, yet also like an eternity.

When the lights came on, Feng Xiaogang frowned.

He didn't participate in the thunderous applause and cheers around him; he simply stood up silently, lowered his head, and quickly walked out of the theater.

He only had one thought in his mind right now.

No wonder Wu Chen set a 1 billion yuan target as a watershed moment.
Damn, the box office gap during the upcoming Lunar New Year season is about to widen.

The "Interstellar Travel Day" event was held simultaneously in IMAX theaters in hundreds of cities around the world.

The sensation it caused was phenomenal.

That night, Twitter, Facebook, Weibo—all social media platforms around the world were flooded with posts about Interstellar.

[IGN: 10/10, perfect score! These ten minutes are the most breathtaking cinematic experience since Avatar!]

[Rotten Tomatoes: 99% Fresh! 99% Audience Score! If the film maintains this level of quality throughout, it would be a miracle for science fiction!]

Interstellar: A film that can completely captivate audiences in just ten minutes.

The hype exploded that day.

Domestic media outlets not only wrote various reports themselves, but also translated and reprinted overseas praise, making it seem like a New Year celebration.

Many people in the industry were taken aback by this spectacle.

"That's an exaggeration. I didn't go to see it, but the people I sent came back saying it was excellent."

"Luckily, I kept my film far away, otherwise it would have been crushed to dust by this thing."

"Liu Yifei has quite a few scenes in the clips alone, so her status is probably going to jump up again!"

"."

While discussions were still raging both at home and abroad, at the headquarters of Universal Pictures in Los Angeles.

CEO David Lyndon leaned on the conference table, listening to his staff's report. The tension he had been building for weeks finally eased.

According to global social media data analysis, "Interstellar Travel Day" generated over 500 million impressions within 24 hours.

The Rotten Tomatoes 'Want to See' rating has skyrocketed to the highest in film history.

Our distribution department has been bombarded with calls from theater managers; they're all frantically adding more copies for the opening week.”

It's important to know that such a globally synchronized event incurs significant promotional costs.

But it's obvious that the results are far better than simply throwing money at advertising.

It can be said that even before its release, the film's reputation and visual effects had already precisely penetrated the core audience through these ten minutes.

"Wu, the current promotional efforts are fantastic. It's a pity the pre-sale data system isn't mature enough; even if we start pre-sales tomorrow, we won't be able to collect any data."

David Lyndon sounded somewhat regretful on the phone.

If the pre-sale data can be tallied quickly, it would be a great promotional point for "Interstellar," and might even create another pre-sale frenzy.

"It's alright," Wu Chen smiled slightly.

"Tomorrow, it's time to tell the audience exactly how long the movie is. Let them know that their ticket to 'Interstellar' will be worth it."

(End of this chapter)