It is official: Oppenheimer will be available to watch at home in the US on November 21, 2023, and November 22 in the UK and Europe. On those dates it will be available to buy or rent via streaming services like iTunes or Amazon Prime Video, or as a 4K Blu-ray.
There’s no information on when it will be available ‘free’ as part of a streaming package, but in the US we expect it to come to Peacock (as it’s released by Universal, which is affiliated with the streamer), while in Great Britain Britain will most likely initially come to Sky Cinema and NOW TV, which are again linked to Universal.
It comes with three hours of special features on both the digital and Blu-ray versions and will be available in 4K HDR – although in the case of the Blu-ray at least that won’t include Dolby Vision or Dolby Atmos support . Instead, it will be a 5.1 DTS-HD soundtrack. This is a shame, but not surprising: director Christopher Nolan’s films have never used Atmos. (However, if you want to hear the soundtrack in Atmos, it’s on Apple Music and Amazon Music Unlimited in Dolby Atmos. Go figure.)
However, it is possible that the streaming version will include Dolby Vision – the streaming version of Basic principle does that, even if the 4K Blu-ray doesn’t. But at the moment, Apple and Amazon’s pre-order pages don’t confirm much about the streaming format, so we’ll have to wait and see.
Despite all this, and the fact that the streaming release is cheaper than the 4K Blu-ray, this is a movie I will definitely get on physical media, and IMAX is the reason.
Make the most of the big screen
Anyone who has followed Nolan’s career knows that the man loves large format IMAX films. Since The Dark Knight, all of his films have had at least sections filmed in IMAX, if not large portions of them. In these sections the picture is larger than regular widescreen movies, and what this means for home releases is that instead of black bars at the top and bottom of the screen, the picture fills the entire TV in IMAX sections. It makes them fantastic showcases for the best TVs.
Except… not on the streaming versions. Watching Interstellar from a digital version is just disappointing because these amazing space and planet scenes never open up as they should. You are always enclosed by those bars. Basic principle is better for this, as it has a larger aspect ratio, but it still doesn’t have the full effect.
If you’ve invested in a big TV and want that IMAX-like experience, you should go old school and have the disc loaded into one of the best 4K Blu-ray players. Even as someone who likes to buy movies through iTunes (I literally have hundreds), this is where I absolutely go physically.
It also doesn’t hurt that I can get the disc in this beautiful steelbook.
You can pre-order the steelbook for $37.99 from Best Buy in the US, or you can order it now for £29.99 from HMV in the UK – or there’s a different sample book available at Amazon for £30 with its own beautiful design.