Tickets are on sale now for Quentin Tarantino’s ninth film, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD, and we’re delighted to share that it’s the latest film receiving a wide release across the Alamo Drafthouse system on 35mm film. And San Francisco guests, you’re in luck. Alamo Drafthouse New Mission will be one of only five theaters across the country – and the only in the Bay Area – to screen the film in glorious widescreen 70mm.
Shot by Oscar-winning cinematographer Robert Richardson ASC on Kodak 35mm film, ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD continues Tarantino’s commitment to celluloid.
“There was no ‘film vs digital’ debate. Digital is not in Quentin’s dictionary,” said Richardson in an interview with Kodak. “Quentin wanted a film that felt contemporary to 1969, with zooms and a Technicolor IB (Imbibition) look, that was rich and with full-blooded color, while also being lived-in with older time periods and sequences from Rick Dalton’s old TV Westerns.”
The following locations are confirmed for 35mm screenings of ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD:
New York, NY
Alamo Drafthouse Brooklyn
Alamo Drafthouse Yonkers
San Francisco, CA
Alamo Drafthouse New Mission [70mm]
Los Angeles, CA
Alamo Drafthouse Downtown LA (tickets on sale soon)
Austin, TX
Alamo Drafthouse South Lamar
Alamo Drafthouse Village
Alamo Drafthouse Lakeline
Alamo Drafthouse Ritz
San Antonio, TX
Alamo Drafthouse Park North
Alamo Drafthouse Marketplace
Denver, CO
Alamo Drafthouse Littleton
Kansas City, MO
Alamo Drafthouse Mainstreet
Raleigh, NC
Alamo Drafthouse Raleigh
Phoenix, AZ
Alamo Drafthouse Tempe
Dallas / Fort Worth, TX
Alamo Drafthouse Cedars
Alamo Drafthouse Richardson
Alamo Drafthouse Las Colinas
Lubbock, TX
Alamo Drafthouse Lubbock
El Paso, TX
Alamo Drafthouse Montecillo
Tickets can be purchased with a commemorative issue of Birth.Movies.Death magazine focusing on the work of Tarantino. You'll also be able to donate to the Will Rogers Motion Pictures Pioneers Foundation with your ticket purchase, benefitting the Foundation’s Pioneers Assistance Fund which provides both short-term and long-term financial and medical assistance to veterans of the motion picture entertainment industry.
This list isn’t final – additional locations may be added as the release date grows near, but we’re so excited to be able to show this film to you on... film. Here’s why.
We’ve got the tools and the talent.
The influence of filmmakers who still shoot on film, as well as the continuing support of studios and distributors, have made it possible for theaters like ours to have film projectors. Alamo Drafthouse maintains over forty 35mm projectors spread across most of our thirty-nine locations. We also keep three wide-format 70mm systems going in Austin, Brooklyn and San Francisco, and we have the opportunity to screen both classic masterpieces like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and modern works by celluloid-loving filmmakers like Paul Thomas Anderson (INHERENT VICE, THE MASTER), Quentin Tarantino (THE HATEFUL EIGHT), and Christopher Nolan (INTERSTELLAR, DUNKIRK).
Here's a couple of the The Ritz projectionists who ran THE HATEFUL EIGHT on 70mm Ultra Panavision while a certain VIP was in the audience.
We know it matters to you.
We installed our first 70mm projectors in 2012 at Austin’s Alamo Drafthouse Ritz for Paul Thomas Anderson's THE MASTER. It was worth the investment – roughly a third of all tickets sold for THE MASTER across the Alamo Drafthouse system were 70mm screenings – and all at one location.
We’ve seen similar numbers on other films that we’ve shown on 35mm and/or 70mm – INHERENT VICE (28% of guests saw it on film), DUNKIRK (30%, the majority on 70mm), INTERSTELLAR (27%), and THE HATEFUL EIGHT (22%).
Those numbers don’t lie – our guests care about seeing movies on film, and we’re happy to serve them what they want.
There’s something special about film.
Look up. The crisp digital pre-show and trailers fade, and you hear the faint whirring of the projector as it begins the film.
Immediately you notice that the colors are richer and that the blacks are darker. There’s a brief nudge to the frame as the projectionist makes a quick adjustment. You notice tiny, barely perceptible imperfections – evidence of each time the print has been run – screenings that might’ve happened before you were even born. It makes you remember that there was a time just a decade or two ago when all movies were seen like this. Seeing movies on celluloid film elicits a feeling that’s entirely personal, but for those of us who love it, it’s magic.
We’re not knocking digital cinema – but 1s and 0s got nothin’ on the experience of seeing history and chemistry and art intertwine and splash in front of you in vivid color.
“Walter Murch said this beautiful thing,” said director Christopher Nolan in 2015. “You shoot an empty room with a chair and an open door. You shoot it on film and you shoot it on video. When you watch it on film you feel that someone is about to come through the door; when you watch it on video you feel that someone has left. On digital you lose your sense of time passing, and with it that sense of expectation that you absolutely have with film.”