2020 Movies Shot on Film Include Tenet, No Time to Die

While the advent of digital cameras has certainly taken over Hollywood in a significant way, there are a number of films coming up in 2020 that were shot on good old fashioned film—including four that were shot using large-format film and IMAX. This via an excellent piece over at Indiewire that shows a bright future for shooting on film, in the wake of the news that Kodak renewed its deal to create traditional film for Disney, NBCUniversal, Paramount, Sony and Warner Bros.

Indeed, said deal was initially driven by filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who banded together with a number of filmmakers to keep film alive by getting studios to agree to purchase a set amount of film from Kodak, which would subsequently keep Kodak from going out of business and thus removing the choice to shoot on film entirely. And many of those same filmmakers have brand new movies coming in 2020 that were shot on film, not digitally.

wonder-woman-1984-gal-gadot — Image via Warner Bros.

2019 was lacking in notable movies that were shot using large-format film (which is different from digital IMAX, in which films like Avengers: Endgame were shot), but 2020 will bring four such features. First and foremost there’s Nolan’s latest film Tenet, which was shot using large-format and IMAX film by cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema. The DP revolutionized shooting in IMAX on Interstellar by going handheld, which hadn’t been done before owing to the size and weight of the IMAX cameras, so it’ll be interesting to see what new tricks Nolan and Hoytema have up their sleeves on Tenet.

Also shot on large-format film were Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman 1984, which was spearheaded by DP Matthew Jensen using mixed film formats, as well as Kenneth Branagh’s Murder on the Orient Express sequel Death on the Nile. And then of course Cary Joji Fukunaga’s No Time to Die marks the first Bond movie ever shot using IMAX cameras, with Oscar-winning DP Linus Sandgren behind the lens. The Bond film uses a mix of both 65mm film and IMAX.

Indiewire notes that the increase in demand for large-format film cameras for these 2020 releases caused a bit of a supply issue—Tenet and No Time to Die were shooting at the same time, but not enough cameras were available. But the Logmar camera company introduced a lightweight, compact Magellan 65mm film camera to help fill the void, so this kind of issue shouldn’t happen again.

last-night-in-soho-complete-fiction — Image via Focus Features

Beyond large-format, there are also a number of movies coming in 2020 that were just shot on good old-fashioned 35mm film. This includes new films from Steven Spielberg, Edgar Wright, and Wes Anderson, and even on the small screen Westworld continues to be shot on film as does Adam McKay’s Succession and his upcoming HBO Lakers series.

Check out the (admittedly incomplete) list of 2020 movies shot on film below, via Indiewire, and get excited about seeing all that beautiful grain onscreen all year long:

A Quiet Place Part II

No Time to Die

Artemis Fowl

F9 (digital/film hybrid)

Wonder Woman 1984

The King of Staten Island

Tenet