Terrence Malick’s ‘Voyage of Time’ Returns To Cinemas This Week In "Ultra Widescreen"

We might need to make a chart to track the various versions of “Voyage Of Time” that Terrence Malick is releasing. Already hitting theaters this fall has been “Voyage Of Time: The IMAX Experience,” which brings the director’s exploration of the universe to theaters equipped as such, complete with Brad Pitt’s soothing narration. Next year, a longer cut for standard cinemas will arrive, with Cate Blanchett guiding viewers through space and time. And now the film will be arriving in yet another format.

READ MORE: Terence Malick’s ‘Voyage Of Time: The IMAX Experience Is A More Rewarding Version Of ‘Life’s Journey’

On December 9th,  a retooled version of “Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience” will land on 21 screens in “ultra widescreen.” In addition to boasting a neck-craning 3:6:1 aspect ratio (you might want to sit near the back of the theater), the movie will also not include Pitt’s narration, which was Malick’s original intention for the IMAX version. So it’s going to be comprised of visuals and score, and nothing more.

But how did Malick and his collaborators arrive at an ultra-wide cut if the film didn’t start out shooting that way? Director of photography Paul Atkins explains there was so much visual information in each 11K scanned frame that it actually wasn’t that hard.

“I was in the grading suite and Terry came in a couple of times so excited and he said, ‘Look at this,’ and we looked at this super widescreen version and looked at a lot of the shots with it. We were stunned at how it affected you emotionally and how immersive it was,” he told Variety.

“….when you’re framing for IMAX, the lower third of the frame is where the audience’s attention is, and that’s how you try to frame it,” he added. “The top of the frame, you don’t often put important information up there. So you can actually extract a more narrow aspect ratio out of that frame and it still works.”

Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience in Ultra Widescreen 3.6” (that’s the official title of this cut) will hit multiplex IMAX locations, though the list of theaters doesn’t seem to have been unveiled just yet.