Ponniyin Selvan () is a Tamil language historical fiction novel by Indian author Kalki Krishnamurthy. It was first serialised in the weekly editions of Kalki, a Tamil magazine, from 29 October 1950 to 16 May 1954 and later integrated into five volumes in 1955. In about 2,210 pages, it tells the story of early days of Chola prince Arulmozhivarman. Kalki visited Sri Lanka three times to gather information and for inspiration.

Ponniyin Selvan is regarded as one of the greatest novels of Tamil literature. The fan-following for the series, which was published weekly in Kalki, was such that it elevated the magazine circulation to a figure of 75,000 copies – a vast readership in a newly independent India. The book continued to be admired in the modern era, developing a cult following and fanbase among people of all generations. Ponniyin Selvan has garnered critical acclaim for its tightly woven plot, vivid narration, witty dialogue, and portrayal of the intrigues and power struggle of the Chola empire in the 10th-century.

The novels were adapted into two films by Mani Ratnam by condensing the first two volumes into Ponniyin Selvan: I, and volumes 3 to 5 into Ponniyin Selvan: II, which were released on 30 September 2022 and 28 April 2023 respectively.

The first publication of the Ponniyin Selvan series outside of Tamil Nadu was released in 2022, published in Malaysia by Jaya Bakti.

Book volumes

Overview

Characters

 Vallavaraiyan Vandiyathevan: The brave, adventurous and sarcastic warrior prince of the Vaanar clan, who later becomes the Commander for Southern Troops under the reign of Utthama Chola. He is the bodyguard and close friend of Karikalan,who sends him as a messenger to Sundara Chola in Thanjavur to invite him to the newly built golden palace in Kanchi. His impulsive actions put himself and others in danger but he comes out of them with trickery and luck. He is the lover of Princess Kundavai. He is loved one-sidedly by Manimekalai, the sister of Kandanmaran.
 Nandhini: Pazhuvoor Queen and wife of Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar whose birth and origin was doubtful in the beginning. The main antagonist of the story. She was born in Madurai and grew up in a priest family along with royal children in Pazhayarai until her youth. She is the foster-sister of Azhwarkadiyan Nambi. She is described  as the most beautiful women in the entire novel. She hated Kundavai as Kundavai was jealous of Nandhini's beauty. Nandhini and Prince Aditya Karikalan developed a liking for each other in their childhood which nobody in the royalty liked. She was forced to flee Pazhaiyarai and live in Madurai. After Aditya Karikalan beheaded the injured Veerapandiyan, Nandhini joined Pandya conspirators and vowed to avenge Veerapandiyan's death by killing Karikalan and destroying the Chola dynasty. By marrying Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar who had lusted for her and by using him, she helped the Pandya conspirators. She married Aditha to involve him. She had a deep hatred towards the Chola royals for their ill-treatment and also had a desire for the throne. She had a terrible childhood that affected her badly and wanted to be with her mother Mandakini. Parthibendra Pallava and Kandanmaran fell for her beauty and she used them for her plot too. [Mandakini Devi went to Thanjavur (while she was pregnant), Sembiyan Maadevi was pregnant too, so she took care of Mandakini during her pregnancy. During child birth Sembiyan Maadevi gave birth to a still born son but Mandakini gave birth to twins - a boy (Madhurantaka) and a girl (Nandhini). Sembiyan Maadevi swapped her still born son with Mandakini's son. She asked Vaani Ammal (a maid in the place at that time) to bury her still born son and gave the daughter to Azhwarkadiyan's parents. After leaving the palace, Vaani Ammal notices that Sembiyan Maadevi's son (Senthan Amuthan) is alive. She fosters him and raises him as her own son.
 Azhwarkadiyan Nambi alias Thirumalaiappan: A Veera Vaishnavite spy who works for the Prime Minister Aniruddha Brahmarayar and Queen Mother Sembiyan Mahadevi. He is the foster-brother of Nandhini and also a close friend of Vandiyathevan. He works closely with Vandiyathevan and saves him from many dangers. He was a loyal, trustful servant to the Chola royal government. He often engages in verbal battles with Veera Shaivites and Advaitis.
 Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar: The chancellor and treasurer of the Chola kingdom from the Pazhuvettaraiyar clan who was respected for his valor, as demonstrated by his 64 battle scars. The second most powerful man in the empire. Enamoured by her beauty, he marries a much younger Nandini, and gets scapegoated by her. He was the leader of the conspirators who tried to make Madhurantakan the next emperor.
 Kundavai alias Ilaya Pirattiyar: The Chola princess. Second child and only daughter of Sundara Chola. Lover of Vandiyathevan. She was respected much by her father and the people for her intelligence and wit. Unlike other princesses of those times, she had ambitions of expanding the Chola empire and enhancing its glory and took a vow to never leave her motherland. She used her brother Arulmozhivarman and his son to achieve her ambition. She raised and taught Arulmozhivarman to be an intelligent prince and wished to make him the Chola emperor. She was jealous of Nandini's beautiful appearance and intelligence and hated her. She sent Vandiyathevan to bring back Arulmozhivarman from Sri Lanka to guard him.
Vaanathi: The shy but playful princess of Kodumbalur. She was raised by her uncle Periya Velar Boothi Vikramakesari because both her father, Siriya Velar and mother are killed. She was sent to Pazhayarai to be one of Kundavai Devi's many friends/ helpers. She tends to faint in stressful situations due to which Ilaya Piratti takes special care of her, making the other princesses envious. She receives a prophecy from Kudanthai Jothidar stating she will bear an extraordinary warrior son who will conquer all 7 seas. She has an immense devotion for Ponniyin Selvan and wishes to marry him but due to Poonguzhali's accusation that her motive to marry Arulmozhi is for the throne, she vows to never sit on the throne if she marries him.
 Arulmozhivarman/ Ponniyin Selvan later known as Rajaraja I: The titular protagonist. The youngest son of Sundara Chola. He was raised in Pazhayarai by Periya Piratti and Ilaya Piratti. He was taught well by his sister and was sent to Sri Lanka at the age of 19 for battle. He was said to be saved by Mother Kaveri herself from drowning in the river when he was 5, earning him the title "Ponniyin Selvan" ("Son of Kaveri").
 Aditha Karikalan: Eldest son of Sundara Chola, the crown prince and the commander of Northern troops during Sundara Chola's reign. He was a distinguished warrior who began fighting at the age of 12. He was known all over the empire for his valiant acts. His haste and irascibility alienated many, and resulted in a conspiracy against him.
 Poonguzhali: A boat woman, she was born and raised in Kodaikkarai. She was adventurous and fearless. She deeply distrusted and disliked men and civilisation. She holds great affection for her aunt Mandakini Devi. She also has an intense love for Ponniyin Selvan and yearns to be Queen because she believes her Aunt should have been the rightful Queen. She saves Arulmozhivarman when he drowns in the ocean and secretly takes him to Nagapattinam to recuperate. She was named "Samudrakumari" (The Maiden of the Ocean) by Prince Arulmozhivarman himself. She marries Senthan Amuthan/ Madhuranthakan and attains her desire of being Queen.
 Madhurantaka Uttama Chozhan alias Senthan Amudhan: He is the son of Sembian Madevi who was given to the flower seller Vaani Ammal, assuming to be a still born baby. . He is a close friend of Vandiyathevan, and helped the latter many times in his missions when he was still known as the son of Vaani Ammal and a calm, humble and honest Shaivite devotee.
 Vaani Ammai: The deaf and mute foster mother of Senthan Amuthan, sister of Mandakini and Thiyaaga Vidankar. Aunt of Poonguzhali. She was skilled in traditional medicine remedies.
 Chinna Pazhuvettaraiyar: alias Kaalandhakandar: The chief in-charge of Thanjavur fort. Younger brother of Periya Pazhuvettaraiyar to whom he had huge respect and love. He is the father-in-law of Mathuranthakar. Both Pazhuvettaraiyar brothers hated Vandiyathevan at first. Chinna Pazhuvettaraiyar constantly warns his brother about Nandini and her conspiracy, but his cautionary words fall on deaf ears.
 Sundara Chola alias Parantaka II: The emperor of Chola empire. He was known for his facial beauty which gave him his name 'Sundara'. When his legs became paralysed and his health began rapidly deteriorating, the Pazhuvettaraiyar brothers moved the emperor from Pazhayarai to Thanjavur so they could better protect him. This sparked the debate for the next rightful heir. His wish was to appoint his uncle's son as his successor. There was a widespread rumor that the emperor was kept as a prisoner by the Pazhuvettaraiyar brothers.
 Vanavan Madevi alias Idaya Pirattiyar: Empress of the Chola empire. Chief queen, wife and caretaker of Sundara Chola. Mother of all his children. Daughter of Thirukovalur Malaiyamaan.
 Sembiyan Madevi alias Periya Pirattiyar: Wife of Gandaraditya Chola and mother of Utthama Chola. A Shaivite devotee who donates a lot of resources to build temples for Lord Shiva across the Chola empire. She was steadfast in not making her son the emperor, which was also the dying wish of her husband. [Mandakini Devi went to Thanjavur (while she was pregnant), Sembiyan Maadevi was pregnant too, so she took care of Mandakini during her pregnancy. During child birth Sembiyan Maadevi gave birth to a still born son but Mandakini gave birth to twins – a boy (Madhurantaka) and a girl (Nandhini). Sembiyan Maadevi swapped her still born son with Mandakini's son. She asked Vaani Ammal (she was a maid in the place at that time) to bury her still born son and gave the daughter to Azhwarkadiyan's parents. Vaani Ammal after leaving the palace notices that Sembiyan Maadevi's son (Senthan Amuthan) is alive, she fosters him and raises him as her own son.]
 Pinaagapani: Son of the traditional healer in Pazhayarai. He was narrow-minded and ambitious and always considered Vandiyathevan his enemy but gets beaten by him all throughout the story. Pinaagapani was sent by Kundavai with Vandiyathevan to lead the way from Pazhaiyarai to Kodikkarai where the former lusts over Poonkuzhali but fails to attract her. His desire to gain high positions in the empire make him prey to Nandini's plans. Killed by Kandhanmaaran
 Thirukovalur Malaiyaman alias Milaadudaiyar: Father-in-law of Sundara Chola and maternal grandfather to his children. He was a well-wisher and advisor for Karikalan and lived with him in Kanchi. He was a rival of the Kadamboor ruler.
 Parthibendra Pallavan: Friend of Karikalan, who comes from the lineage of Pallavas. He fought along with him in battles. He lusts Nandhini and hates Vandiyathevan from the beginning.
 Thiyaaga Vidankar: Father of Poonguzhali and in-charge of the light house at Kodikkarai. He is the younger brother of Mandakini Devi and Vaani Ammal.
 Rakkammaal: Sister-in-law of Poonguzhali. She joined the Pandiyan conspirators due to her greed for money. Revadasa Kiramavithan was her father.
 Anbil Aniruddha Brahmarayar: The Prime Minister of emperor Sundara Chola's Court and a close friend and confidante to the emperor. He was highly respected by the people for his wit and intelligence. On Sundara Chola's request, he became the minister and assisted Sundara Chola in matters of administration in addition to being a teacher. He was the keeper of many of the emperor's personal and royal secrets. His network of spies across the Chola empire ensured that almost nothing could happen without his knowledge. One of the best of them is Azhwarkadiyan Nambi.
 Boothi Vikramakesari alias Kodumbalur Periya Velar: Irunkovel chieftain and uncle of Vaanathi. The Commander of the southern troops during Sundara Chola's reign. He fights alongside Arulmozhivarman against Mahindan's troops in Sri Lanka. He had a desire for Vaanathi to marry Arulmozhivarman and thus become the Queen. He and Thirukovalur Malaiyaman opposed the proposition of making Mathuranthakar the heir to the throne. The Kodumbalur Velars and Pazhuvettaraiyars were rivals though they were both loyal to the Cholas.
 Theveraalan (alias Parameswaran), Idumbankkari, Ravidasan, Soman Sambavan, Revadasa Kiramavithan: Antagonists of the novel. Bodyguards of the late Veerapandiyan. They conspire to kill the members of the Chola royal family. Ravidasan and Parameswaran were once ministers in Chola court. Ravidasan and Revadasa Kiramavithan were acting as wizards. Idumbankkari was acting as a guard in Kadambur palace.
 Amarabhujanga Nedunchezhiyan/ former Madhurantakan: Foster Son of Sembiyan Maadevi who was raised as a Shaivite. He was raised a calm and humble Shaivite and taught not to desire the throne. He was brainwashed by his twin sister Nandini to develop a greed for the throne. Kundavai and others thought that he was untalented and lacked the basic characteristics and skills to be an emperor. The people of the Chola kingdom did not want him to become the ruler either. He fled once he discovered he was the son of Veera Pandiyan and the crown prince of Pandya Kingdom, turning into a warrior.
Mandakini alias Oomai Rani/ Singala Nachiyar: The deaf and mute mother of twins, Nandini and Amarabhujangan. Love interest of Sundara Chola. She had great affection towards his children and her niece, Poonguzhali. She is always around Arulmozhivarman and saves him from many dangers. [Mandakini Devi went to Thanjavur (while she was pregnant), Sembiyan Maadevi was pregnant too, so she took care of Mandakini during her pregnancy. During child birth Sembiyan Maadevi gave birth to a still born son but Mandakini gave birth twins to a boy (Madhurantaka) and a girl (Nandhini). Sembiyan Maadevi swapped her still born son with Mandakini's son. She asked Vaani Ammal (she was a maid in the place at that time) to bury her still born son and gave the daughter to Azhvarkadiyan's parents. Vaani Ammal after leaving the palace notices that Sembiyan Maadevi's son (Senthan Amuthan) is alive, she fosters him and raises him as her own son.]
 Sambuvaraiyar: The petty ruler of Kadamboor from the Sambuvaraya family.
 Chinna Sambuvaraiyar alias Kandhanmaran: Prince of Kadamboor. Son of Sambuvaraiyar and close friend of Vandiyathevan. He is the one who arranges for the petty rulers to gather in Kadamboor and hold a meeting to conspire to make Madhurantakan the next Chola emperor. He then assumes that Vandiyathevan tried to kill him and begins to think of him as his worst enemy.
 Murugaiyan: Elder brother of Poonguzhali. Husband of Rakkammaal. He rowed the Pandiyan conspirators to Sri Lanka from Kodikkarai. But later compensated for his unknowing wrongdoing by helping Arulmozhivarman reach Thanjavur.
 Manimekalai: Innocent and shy princess of Kadamboor. Younger sister of Kandanmaaran and daughter of Sambuvaraiyar. She had deep, immense love for Vandiyathevan that he did not reciprocate.
 Karuthiruman aka Paithiyakaran (The Madman): An assistant of Veerapandian and prisoner in the dungeons of Thanjavur. Claims to know the location of the Pandyan crown and sceptre hidden in Sri Lanka.
 Kudanthai Jothidar: The astrologer in the town of Kudanthai (present-day Kumbakonam) who predicts that Arulmozhivarman will become a great emperor. He also predicts that Vanathi will marry Arulmozhi and bear a great king who will take the Chola dynasty to its glory. He later moves to Thiruvaiyaru since his house was destroyed in the Kaveri floods.
 Kalyani: Mother of Sundara Chola. Wife of Arinjaya Chola.
 Parangusan Nedunchezhiyan: Pandian Prince. The 5-year-old son of Veerapandiyan and his Queen, raised by Nandini and the Aabathudhavigal (Pandyan conspirators) who declared him the successor of Veerapandiyan at Thirupurambiyam Pallipadai.
 Eesaana Sivabattar: The priest of the Shiva temple in Pazhayarai. Elder brother of Azhwarkadiyan and foster brother of Nandini. He helps Vandiyathevan secretly meet Kundavai in Pazhayarai when the Pazhuvettaraiyar brothers were searching for him there.
 Aacharya Bhikshu: The head monk of Chudamani Vihara in Nagapattinam who saves Arulmozhivarman when he was affected by Kulir Suram.
 Chandramathi: Maid and companion of Manimekalai in Kadambur palace who is literate and helps her read the final letter written by Aditha Karikalan.
Veera Pandian: Pandian King. Father of Nandhini, Amarbhujangan and Parangusan. Husband of Mandakini. Killed by Aditha Karikalan when he was hiding in Nandhini's hut.

Plot summary

The story revolves around Vandiyathevan, a charming, brave and courageous young man who sets out across the Chola land to deliver a message from the Crown Prince, Aditya Karikalan, to Emperor Sundara Chola and Princess Kundavai. The story shuttles between Vandiyathevan's travels in Chola country and the young Prince Arulmozhivarman's (later known as Raja Raja Chola) travels in Sri Lanka. The narrative details attempts by his sister Kundavai to bring back Arulmozhivarman to establish political peace in a land seemingly beset with unrest and civil war plotted by vassals and petty chieftains.
The story begins as the emperor Sundara Chola is ill and bedridden. His son Aditya Karikalan is the general of the Northern Command and lives in Kanchi. The younger son Arulmozhivarman is in Sri Lanka on a military campaign. Their sister Kundavai lives in the Chola royal household at Pazhayarai.
The story advances when rumours abound that there is a conspiracy against Sundara Chola and his sons.

Vallavarayan Vandiyathevan, Crown Prince Aditha Karikalan's messenger, is sent by him to investigate the conspiracy and deliver the news to Sundara Chola and his sister Kundavai. Vandiyathevan reaches Veeranarayanapuram where he meets a vaishvite spy, Azhwarkaddiyan Nambi.
There he sees Periya Pazhuvettarayar,the country's treasurer along with his wife Nandhini in a closed palanquin who are on their way to Kadambur. After seeing the palanquin, Nambi asks if Vandiyathevan can deliver a message to Ilaya Rani ( Nandhini ) if he meets her in Kadambur. Vandiyathevan reaches Kadambur and meets his friend Kandhamaaran ( Kadambur prince ). He is invited to see the devaralan aatam where he meets many other petty chieftains. At the night, he eavesdroops on a secret meeting at the palace. In the meeting, the chieftains take an oath to make Prince Maduranthaka Thevar, Gandaradithya Chola's son as the next king. While he listens to all of these, he finds Nambi too, trying to listen to their plan. The next day, Vandiyathevan leaves for Thanjavur to reveal the conspiracy to Sundara Chola. On the way he finds Nambi and asks his true motive for visiting Kadambur and what relationship he has with Pazhuvoor Ilaya Rani. To this Nambi reveals that Nandhini was his foster sister and disappeared under mysterious circumstances. After they cross the Kollidam river, Vandiyathevan leaves for Tanjai while Nambi gets a chance to eavesdrop on pandiya spies talking about destroying the Chola kingdom.
On the way to Tanjai, Vandiyathevan sees Ilaya Rani's palanquin and goes near it vowing to meet Maduranthakan but is disappointed seeing the actual Nandhini in the palanquin. Nandhini gives Pazhuvoor a signet ring to Vandiyathevan and asks him to use that to access the Tanjavur fort.
Vandiyathevan reaches Tanjai and meets a flower-selling youth, Sendhan Amudhan who helps him.
The next morning, Vandiyathevan enters the fort using the signet ring outsmarting the fort commander, Chinna Pazhuvettarayar. Vandiyathevan meets emperor Sundar Chola and reveals about the conspiracy against him and his sons.
Chinna Pazhuvettarayar suspects him and arrests him but Vandiyathevan escapes smartly and climbs a ladder that leads him to Ilaya Rani's latha mandapam. He meets Nandhini and delivers his message from Azhwarkaddiyan and tells her about his venture. The ladder Vandiyathevan climbed to reach latha mandapam was actually meant for Ravidasa, who is referred to as Mandhiravadi. After talking with Nandhini, Vandiyathevan finds an entrance to a secret passage and tries to escape through it.
Periya Pazhuvettarayar reaches Tanjai and meets his brother who reveals his suspicion about Nandhini. Vandiyathevan sees Maduranthakan coming through passage with Kandhamaaran and is welcomed by Periya Pazhuvettarayar and Nandhini.
Finally, after exploring the passage he finds the exit to it. There Vandiyathevan finds Kandhamaaran stabbed and saves him but Kandhamaaran thinks Vandiyathevan tried to kill him and turns against him. Learning that Vandiyathevan escaped, Chinna Pazhuvettarayar sends his soldiers to capture him. With the help of Sendhan, Vandiyathevan escapes but Sendhan is captured instead of him.
Vandiyathevan reaches Pazhayaarai where Ilaya Pirati Kundavai Devi lives. With Nambi's help Vandiyathevan meets Kundavai and delivers Karikalan's message to her.
Kundavai asks Vandiyathevan to bring Arulmozhi Varman, aka Ponniyin Selvan, back from Lanka along with a doctor's son, Pinnagapani, to bring medicines for Sundara Chola. Aditha Karikalan, his grandfather, Thirukovalor Malayaman and friend, Parthibendra Pallavan discuss the country's problems and decide that Parthibendra should go to Lanka to bring Arulmozhi. At night, Parthibendra insists Karikalan reveal his past.
In his youth, Aditha Karikalan and Nandhini love each other, they were sure that they will get married and live a happy life, but whole royal family was against their love and plot to separate them. So when Karikalan went to war Nandini was expelled from the kingdom by Karikalan's family as she is an orphan so they don't want her to be Aditha Karikalan's wife who is going to be the king, but Karikalan is unaware of his family's plan. He started to search her everywhere when he returned. Aditha Karikalan and Nandini cannot forget each other even when they are miles apart. Later she becomes vengeful and vows to destroy the Chola dynasty after Aditha Karikalan killed Veerapandiyan unaware of that Veerapandiyan is Nandini's father. She marries Periya Pazhuvettarayar who lusts for Nandini in order to seek revenge but she has no relationship with him.

Vandiyathevan reaches Kodikarai and meets Poonguzhali, lighthouse keeper Thygaravidagar's daughter. He tries to seek Poonguzhali's help but she refuses. Pinnagapani starts to dislike Vandiyathevan and tries to get him caught by Chinna Pazhuvettarayar's soldiers. Poonguzhali helps him to escape. Finally, he convinces her and reaches Lanka to meet Ponniyin Selvan. Ilaya Pirati Kundavai Devi reaches Tanjavur and meets her father Sundara Cholar who is ill and is depressed. To seek the reason behind it, Kundavai talks with her father and learns that in his youth, Sundara Cholar went to Lanka and falls in love with a deaf-mute woman named Mandakini. After some days, Chola ships arrived there and took him to Tanjai and he promised her that he will return but fails. He says that he saw her again multiple times and thinks that she vowed to torture his family. He had said his prime minister, Aniruddha Brahmarayar to bring Mandakini back to him but Brahmarayar lies that she died. From then he is been disturbed and falls ill. Ilaya Rani Nandhini helps Kandhamaaran heal. Sendhan Amudhan caught by the soldiers is put in jail. Learning that he is Vandiyathevan's friend, Kundavai asks Chinna Pazhuvettarayar to release him. Nandhini who is known for her beauty, uses Kandhamaaran and asks him to invite Karikalan to Kadambur. Kandhamaaran agrees. Periya Pazhuvettarayar asks Nandhini about the signet ring with Vandiyathevan and she acts as if she did that as a part of their plan. In Lanka, Kodambalur Periya vellar Boothi Vikrama Kesari arrests Vandiyathevan but is saved by Nambi. They together go in search of Ponniyin Selvan. They meet Parthibendra along with some soldiers. They realise that the soldiers are Pandiya Aabathudavigal who are vowing to kill Ponniyin Selvan. They find Ponniyin Selvan is an elephant rider for foreigners. Ponniyin Selvan welcomes Vandiyathevan with a fight.
They reach Anuradhapuram for a festival. On the way, they see a tall Buddha statue with some clues that invite Ponniyin Selvan to an underground Buddhist monastery where he is offered the Lankan crown but he refuses it. When they return, they are attacked by Aabathudavigal but are saved by Mandakini. They come back to Anuradhapuram and rest.

Ponniyin Selvan reveals that Mandakini was the one who saved him while he drowning in Ponni river. This is the reason why he attains that name. Ponniyin Selvan also tells that Mandakini had saved him multiple times in Lanka too. While they talk about her, Mandakini comes there and takes them somewhere to show some drawings about her life.
Next day, Kodambalur vellar meets Ponniyin Selvan and advices him to stay in Lanka itself. Parthibendra asks him to come to Kanchi. Vandiyathevan tells him to come along with him to Pazhayarai. Kodambalur vellar also reveals that a chola ship has come to arrest Ponniyin Selvan with Chakravarthi's orders. He tells that he learned it from Poonguzhali. Poonguzhali who has feelings for Ponniyin selvan reveals about what she saw and heard. Eventhough everyone says Ponniyin Selvan to not go to Tanjavur, he goes with Poonguzhali to the Chola ships only to find that the Chola soldiers were killed by Arabians. Vandiyathevan boards a ship thinking that it is a chola ships but finds aabathudavigal there. Ponniyin selvan goes to save Vandiyathevan in parthibendra's ship. Due to the cyclone, Ponniyin Selvan and Vandiyathevan drown in the sea. Poonguzhali saves them.

Periya Pazhuvettarayar learns about Ponniyin Selvan's drowning. He reaches Kodikarai along with Nandhini and lines up his soldiers along the coast to find Ponniyin Selvan if he comes there.
Nandhini uses the opportunity and asked Parthibendra to bring Karikalan to Kadambur. Ponniyin Selvan falls ill with a poisonous fever. They consider going to Kodikarai but Pazhuvettarayar's soldiers guard the coast. Poonguzhali leaves them in her own shelter in the forest and goes to investigate learning about Aabathudavigal's relationship with her brother's wife, Rakkamma. She finds Sendhan Amudhan who follows her. Mandhiravadi Ravidasa follows her to find Ponniyin Selvan but fails, getting caught inside a mud pond. He is saved but Vandiyathevan and Poonguzhali fool Ravidasa and escape. Poonguzhali learns that  Sendhan bought news from Kundavai who wants Ponniyin Selvan to arrive at Nagapattinam. They take him there after Vandiyathevan leaves for Pazhayarai. On the way, he stops at an iron smelter to give his horse some iron protection for its legs. There he finds a sword with the fish emblem of the Pandiya. After he sleeps there for so
awhile, he learns that the Pazhuvettarayar family crossed him by telling him about Ponniyin Selvan's drowning and are on their way to Tanjavur. On the way to Pazhayarai, he finds Devaralan who takes him to Nandhini. He reaches Pazhayarai. To enter the fort he claims that he is an astrologer to Maduranthakan and fools him. Maduranthakan is stopped by his mother who tells him to leave all his will to become the Chola emperor but he does not pay heed to her request. Vandiyathevan meets Kundavai and reveals everything to her. Brahmarayar and Kundavai send Vandiyathevan to warn Karikalan about Nandhini and protect him.
Vanathi who is worried about Ponniyin Selvan, learns about his presence in Nagapattinam and ventures there. On the way, she is interrupted by Shaivites who force her to reveal Ponniyin Selvan's whereabouts. She refuses and they attack her. She falls unconscious and gets up to find herself in Kundavai's lap. Kundavai tells her that all of it was a dream but it was just a plan made by her to test Vanathi.
When Vanathi is attacked even Vandiyathevan sees it. He goes to save her but on the way meets Maduranthakan. He reaches a pallipadai where Aabathudavigal were gathered to crown a young boy as a Pandiya prince. Vandiyathevan is found but Nandhini stops them from killing him. Kundavai and Vanathi reach Aanaimangalam and meet Ponniyin Selvan and discuss their next step.

Paying heed to Nandhini's request, Karikalan goes to Kadambur. Vandiyathevan and Nambi go to Kadambur where they find a secret passage to enter the palace. Vandiyathevan enters it to go into vettai mandapam. There he sees some aabathudavigal. He opens another exit of the passage that leads to Nandhini's room where he sees Kadhamaaran's sister Manimegalai, who hearing about Vandiyathevan, has fallen in love with him. He then escapes by using Manimegalai. He meets Karikalan and warns him about Nandhini but Karikalan doesn't listen. Aditha Karikalan cannot forget Nandini and is unable to hate her even though he knows her evil plans against him and the Chola dynasty, revealing his pure love for Nandini. Pazhuvettarayar and Nandhini come to Kadambur. Karikalan also reaches Kadambur and is welcomed by the Sambuvarayar family. Periya Pazhuvettarayar talks with Karikalan about the next emperor. Karikalan agrees to crown Maduranthaka as the king but puts in a condition stating that he should be given permission to seize lands towards the north and be the emperor for the places he annexed. The chieftains agree to this and send Pazhuvettatayar to bring Maduranthaka from Tanjavur.
Pazhuvettarayar leaves Nandhini in Kadambur and ventures to Tanjavur.
In Kodikarai, Poonguzhali sends Sendhan back to Tanjavur and tries to take her aunt Mandakini to Nagapattinam to meet Ponniyin Selvan. They are interrupted by men who take Mandakini to Tanjavur. Poonguzhali and Sendhan reunite again and follow Mandakini. When they are almost near Tanjai, heavy rain causes flooding in the Chola country. Intending to save Mandakini, Poonguzhali exchanges herself with her aunt and sits in the palanquin and goes to Tanjai Fort. Sendhan Amudhan takes his aunt to his home. Kundavai comes to Brahmarayar's home to talk about her father's bad condition and the damage to Chola country because of the flood. Actually, Brahmarayar's men were those who kidnapped Mandakini. After learning about Poonguzhali's exchange, they send her to bring Mandakini but she fails as Mandakini enters a secret tunnel through which some aabathudavigal have entered that leads to Sundara Chola's room. Mandakini that night exits the tunnel and meets Sundara Chola. Sundara Chola is shocked by her arrival and gets angry. The next morning, Mandakini enters the tunnel again, spying on the aabathudavigal.
In Kadambur, Nandhini gains Manimegalai's friendship and uses her for her plan. They leave for veeranarayana pond for a picnic where they meet Vandiyathevan and Karikalan who come to the forest for hunting, where Nandini had a conversation with Karikalan.

On the way to Tanjai, Pazhuvettarayar is caught in the storm and drowns in Kollidam. After suffering a lot he reaches a Durga temple near the river. There he gets a chance to follow Pandiya aabathudavigal who talks about murdering Sundar Chola and his sons tomorrow. Listening to this, Pazhuvettarayar attacks them but they escape. During their talk, they also reveal about Nandhini's motive. Pazhuvettarayar goes to Kudanthai where he meets Kundavai and Vanathi, alerts them about the conspiracy and returns to Kadambur. On the same night, Nagapattinam Choodamani Viharam gets drowned while Ponniyin Selvan saves the head Buddhist monk and reaches Aanaimangalam palace. There he is forced to reveal himself to the people and plans to leave for Tanjai. The aabathudavigal plan to kill Ponniyin Selvan using his elephant rider but fails miserably as Ponniyin Selvan knows how to control elephants. While going to Tanjai, Vanathi gets caught in a flood. Ponniyin Selvan reaches there on time and saves her. Along with Vanathi, Ponniyin Selvan reaches Tanjavur, enters the fort as an elephant rider and meets his father Sundara Chola. There the aabathudavigal try to kill Sundara Chola but is stopped by Mandakini who sacrifices her life for him revealing her love for him and his family. In Kadambur, Nandhini plans to kill Karikalan and arranges for it. Vandiyathevan and pandyas were also hiding in Nandhini's room. Karikalan comes to Nandini's room even after he knows her plan to kill him. When Nandini sees Karikalan she hesitates. She hates Aditha Karikalan for changing her fate but she also loves him for accepting her for herself. Vandiyathevan became unconscious by Pandyas. Aditha Karikalan and Nandini reveal their love for each other and regret their fate. Suddenly lights go off and when the lights turn on again Aditha Karikalan is found dead in the room. The room catches fire. Vandiyathevan regains consciousness, finds Aditha Karikalan, and brings his body out of the Everyone suspects Vandiyathevan because there was no one in the place except him so they tie him up. They take them to Tanjavur, read Karikalan the last rites and discuss the next step.  Nambi and Poonguzhali save Pazhuvettarayar and reveal the true motive of Nandini. Periya Pazhuvettarayar realises his mistake and feels guilty for betraying the Chola kingdom in his lust for Nandini. Nandhini escapes on a horse. Vandiyathevan is put in jail where he meets Paithiyakaran, aka Karuthiruman, who reveals he knows a great secret of the Chola dynasty. They work together and escape the jail and with the help of Nambi reach Sendhan's house. There Madurantaka and his mother are found.
Karuthiruman escapes with Maduranthaka. Maduranthaka badly wants to become the next king, but his mother reveals that he is not her son but the son of an orphan woman, Mandakini. She exchanged her child, since her child was lifeless. She gives her child to Vaani Amai ( mandakini's deaf sister) who is alerted by Karuthiruman that the child is alive. The child now seems to be Sendhan Amudhan. Upon learning it Madurantaka thinks that he is the Pandiya heir and goes with Karuthiruman. Pinnagapani tries to kill Sendhan but fails. He stabs Vandiyathevan but then thinks it was Adurantaka. Then he follows Karuthiruman along with Kandhamaaran who attack Maduranthaka thinking he is Vandiyathevan. Pinnagapani dies there. Vandiyathevan is saved by Kundavai and Poonguzhali. Since Madurantakan goes missing, Nambi dresses up Sendhan Amudhan as Madurantaka and brings him inside the fort. Manimegalai comes to Tanjai and meets Kundavai and says that she was the one who killed Karikalan just to save Vandiyathevan. She tries to drown in the river where Vandiyathevan saves her. He goes to Sundara Chola's court. Pazhuvettarayar reveals that he was the one who killed Aditha Karikalan releasing Vandiyathevan and killing himself. Before dying he tells Nambi that he did not kill Aditha Karikalan, when he went to the palace Karikalan is already found dead. He accepts the blame because he knows that Vandiyadevan and Kundavai love each other and doesn't want to separate them and also feels guilty for betraying Chola kingdom. Arulmozhi reveals that he will become the next Chakravarthi. Sendhan marries Poonguzhali. Vandiyathevan and Ponniyin Selvan dress as China traders and bring silk clothes for Kundavai and Vanathi. Sembiyan Maadevi asks Ponniyin Selvan to marry Vanathi but he says that she has taken a oath to not become the chakravarthini.  During Ponnoyin Selvan's coronation, he makes Chinna Pazhuvettarayar move away from there and crowns Sendhan Amudhan the real madurantakan. Later Arulmozhi Varman meets Nandini who is hiding in a village where she reveals to Arulmozhi about her birth secret and truth behind Karikalan's death. Chinna Pazhuverttarayar realises that his daughter is married to Pandiya's heir and she has gone there. The old madurantaka fights with Chinna Pazhuvettarayar pushing him. Nambi saves him. After Aditha Karikalan's death Nandini loses her will to live as she loves him truly and he is the only man who loved her truly and accepted her even though the whole dynasty was against them, while others only lust after Nandini for her beauty. In her sorrow, she drowns herself in the Ponni River, revealing her pure love for Aditha Karikalan. Aditha Karikalan and Nandini's love story has a tragic end, even though they find true love, they cannot be together. They went from being in love to becoming enemies, but never lost the love they had for each other and died because of it as well.

Vandiyathevan meets Kundavai who both reveal their feelings about each other. Meanwhile, he learns that Ponniyin Selvan married Vanathi. Vandiyathevan receives a message from Kandhamaaran asking him to come and meet Manimegalai. Vandiyathevan goes to meet Manimegalai, who loved him, and dies in his hands.

Publication

The novel was first serialised in the weekly editions of Kalki during the period from 29 October 1950 to 16 May 1954 resulting the total period of development of work be 3 years, 6 months, and 18 days. The following year, Managala Noolagam released the novel in book form.

Adaptations

Film and television
There have been several attempts to create film adaptations of Ponniyin Selvan, beginning with an attempt in 1958 by M. G. Ramachandran. He bought the film rights to the novel for , and announced that he would produce, direct and star in the adaptation which would feature an ensemble cast including Gemini Ganesan, Vyjayanthimala Bali, Savitri, and Padmini. Ramachandran chosen Mahendran to write screenplay for the film. Before shooting could begin, Ramachandran met with an accident, and the wound took six months to heal, Ramachandran was unable to continue with the film despite renewing the rights four years later.

In the late 1980s, actor Kamal Haasan and Mani Ratnam worked together on adopting the novel into a film. Ratnam revealed that he worked on a first draft of the film alongside Kamal Haasan, who had bought the rights of the novel from Ramachandran, but the pair shelved their plan as the project did not make financial sense at the time. Ramachandran also requested Bharathiraja to make the film. Kamal Haasan then attempted to make the story into a forty-part television series during the early 1990s, and worked with writer Ra. Ki. Rangarajan on the screenplay, but the project was later stalled.

In the 2000s, there were further attempts to make the book into television series by Makkal TV and by Kalaignar TV, through a project directed by Naga. A 32-hour animation film was planned by Rewinda Movie Toons, a Chennai-based animation studio, in 2008 and took seven years to complete. The film was set to be released by April 2015, but remains unreleased as of October 2022. In late 2010, Ratnam renewed his interest in his film project and worked alongside writer Jeyamohan to finalise the script for the film adaptation of Ponniyin Selvan. The film was later shelved before the start of the filming stage, as the expected cost of production escalated. Jeyamohan stated that the film did not materialise as the team struggled to find available locations to shoot the film. He revealed that temple officials in Tamil Nadu refused to allow the team to film scenes on the premises and that the expensive cost of producing replica sets meant that it would not be a viable solution.

In 2016, Eros International engaged Jeyamohan and Soundarya Rajinikanth, as a creative producer, to make the book into a web-series but the project did not develop into production. In early 2019, Soundarya Rajinikanth associated with another production house, May 6 Entertainment, and director Sooriyaprathap to make a web-series of the novel for MX Player. After years of little promotion, Soundarya announced that the project was still under the planning phase during September 2021. In January 2021, a further adapted web series produced by Eternitee Motion Krafte and directed by Ajay Pratheeb titled Chiranjeevi Ponniyin Selvan was announced. The makers announced that the series would have 125 episodes, with technicians such as Ilaiyaraaja and Sabu Cyril joining the team.

2022 film

In early 2019, Mani Ratnam officially restarted production on his film project. His two-film adaptation featured an ensemble cast consisting of Vikram, Aishwarya Rai Bachchan, Jayam Ravi, Karthi and Trisha. In September 2021, the filming for both the parts got completed. The film was released on 30 September 2022 in five Indian languages and extends to a sequel Ponniyin Selvan: II.

Stage play
Avvai Shanmugam was the first to organise a conference on Tamil drama in Erode, and the first to organise a drama contest, in 1945.
One of the prize winning scripts was 'Raja Raja Chozhan,' which was staged in 1955 with Shanmugam as prince Rajendra.
'Raja Raja Chozhan' was also presented at the Motilal Nehru Centenary celebrations in Delhi in 1961, earning compliments from Nehru for the splendid acting.
In Singapore, 'Raja Raja Chozhan' was also enacted 90 times. Overall it was staged 2,146 times.

Avvai Shanmugam played the role of Maamallan in Kalki's 'Sivakamiyin Sabatham' and the sets were grand, befitting the story. For the scene in which Paranjothi tames an elephant that runs amok, two men inside a specially made elephant, operated levers as they walked in unison.

In 1999 the book was adapted into a stage play by E. Kumaravel and was staged by Magic Lantern Theater in Buck's Theatre inside YMCA Nandanam, Chennai. The script's length was originally over nine hours long, but was shortened into a performance time of four hours and 20 minutes and featured 72 actors on a multi-level setting.

Again, the book was adapted into a stage play in a very grand scale by SS International Live along with Magic Lantern theatre group in Chennai, in June 2014. The crew includes Kumaravel, who penned the screenplay & dialogues, Thotta Tharani as art director, Preethi Athreya as costume designer and Bhanu leading the make-up and hair styling department. Pravin directed the play.

Chicago Tamil Sangam staged the play in May 2013 with over 40 volunteers in cast and crew.

Novels and Comic books
The Tiger Throne by Preetha Rajah Kannan is an English retelling of this vast 5 volume epic in one complete novel.

In 2017, Nila comics started releasing series of comic books where every comic book is an adaptation of two chapters from the novel. It is available in Tamil and English. As of January 2019, There have been 18 comic books released in Tamil and 10 in English.

English and other translations
There are at least six different translations of Ponniyin Selvan available in English by Preetha Rajah Kannan, Indra Neelamegam, Pavithra Srinivasan, CV Karthik Narayanan, Varalotti Rengasamy and Sumeetha Manikandan. On 21 February 2015, a Sanskrit translation by Rajalakshmi Srinivasan was released at a public function in Chennai.

English translations

Malayalam translations

See also

Sivagamiyin Sapatham
Parthiban Kanavu
Romance of the Three Kingdoms

References

Bibliography

External links

 Ponniyin Selvan Tamil Audio Book by Nandhini – Nandhiniyin Kural
கல்கியின் பொன்னியின் செல்வன் 2D வடிவில் - Ponniyin Selvan Tamil Book Narrated by Satheeshraj (Bioscope) – 150 Episodes
Kalki's பொன்னியின்_செல்வன் தமிழ் ஒலிப் புத்தகம் (Ponniyin Selvan Tamil Audio Book Narrated by Sri Srinivasa (Spotify) – 77 hours (all 5 Bagams/ Parts) Story in Tamil
Ponniyin Selvan Audio & Video Story in Tamil
Ponniyin Selvan Audio Books / Ponniyin Selvan Story in Tamil by Music Box Tamil – Ponniyin Selvan Full Story details Audio Book.
 Ponniyin Selvan – Complete Novel in Tamil Wikisource (Unicode)
 Ponniyin Selvan in Google Books
 Ponniyin Selvan Varalaatru Peravai – Discussed extensively about Ponniyin Selvan novel, characters, facts and fiction. Also discuss other history related topics related to India.
 Ponniyin Selvan with Original Maniam Pictures – Ponniyin Selvan published with Original Pictures of Artist Maniam by Vikatan.
Kalki's Novel as Tamil Audio Books by Sri Srinivasa – details on Kalki's novel Ponniyin Selvan, Sivagamiyn Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu in Audio Book Mp3 format
 Ponniyin Selvan Novel epub Free work – details on Kalki's novel Ponniyin Selvan, Sivagamiyn Sabatham, Parthiban Kanavu in Epub and Kindle format
Balasubramanian, Kudavoil. "Udaiyarkugi Inscription", Varalaaru
Indra Neelameggham, English translation, free link Ponni's Beloved
Indra Neelameggham, English translation, part 3B

Tamil history
Tamil novels
Novels first published in serial form
Indian romance novels
Historical romance novels
Works originally published in Kalki (magazine)
Novels set in the Chola Empire
Indian historical novels
Indian historical novels in Tamil
Novels set in Tamil Nadu
Indian novels adapted into films
Novels set in the 10th century

Ponniyin Selvan


Dead Girls Don't Cry is the sixth studio album by the Danish psychobilly band the Nekromantix, released in 2004 by Hellcat Records. It was the group's last album with founding member Peter Sandorff, who had returned to the band several years previous after having been out of the lineup for most of the 1990s, and also their final album with his brother Kristian Sandorff. Prior to  this release band leader Kim Nekroman had relocated to Los Angeles, California while the Sandorff brothers remained in Denmark. Recording was therefore rushed as the Sandorffs had to travel to California in order to participate. Following this release the Sandorffs left the band, and Nekroman found new members to fill out the lineup.

Track listing
All songs written by Gaarde/Sandorff/Sandorff
"Black Wedding"
"Backstage Pass to Hell"
"Moonchaser"
"Struck By a Wreckin' Ball"
"Where Do Monsters Go"
"Dead Girls Don't Cry"
"What's on Your Neighbors BBQ"
"I'm a Shockstar"
"Ghoulina"
"A Stone With Your/My Name"
"Dead Moon Walking"
"World of Dust"
"Dead By Dawn"
untitled

Performers
Kim Nekroman - double bass, vocals
Peter Sandorff - guitar, backing vocals
Kristian Sandorff - drums

Album information
Record label: Hellcat Records
All songs written by Gaarde/Sandorff/Sandorff.
Recorded and mixed at Steakhouse Studio in north Hollywood, California.
Engineered by John Silas Cranfield with assistance and additional engineering by Ken Eisenagel.
Additional backing vocals recorded by Benjamin Hammerum and Heinrik Soegaard at Bernie's Bloody Barbershop Studios in Copenhagen, Denmark.
Mastered by Jeff King at Threshold Sound and Vision in west Los Angeles, California.
Photography by Bo Willy Zachariasen and Eri Shibata.
Artwork and layout by Kim Nekroman.

References

Nekromantix albums
2004 albums

Dead Girls Don't Cry


Interstellar is a 2014 epic science fiction film co-written, directed, and produced by Christopher Nolan. It stars Matthew McConaughey, Anne Hathaway, Jessica Chastain, Bill Irwin, Ellen Burstyn, Matt Damon, and Michael Caine. Set in a dystopian future where humanity is embroiled in a catastrophic blight and famine, the film follows a group of astronauts who travel through a wormhole near Saturn in search of a new home for humankind.

Brothers Christopher and Jonathan Nolan wrote the screenplay, which had its origins in a script Jonathan developed in 2007 and was originally set to be directed by Steven Spielberg. Kip Thorne, a Caltech theoretical physicist and 2017 Nobel laureate in Physics, was an executive producer, acted as a scientific consultant, and wrote a tie-in book, The Science of Interstellar. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema shot it on 35 mm movie film in the Panavision anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm. Principal photography began in late 2013 and took place in Alberta, Iceland, and Los Angeles. Interstellar uses extensive practical and miniature effects, and the company Double Negative created additional digital effects.

Interstellar premiered in Los Angeles on October 26, 2014. In the United States, it was first released on film stock, expanding to venues using digital projectors. The film received generally positive reviews from critics and grossed over $677 million worldwide ($715 million after subsequent re-releases), making it the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2014. It has been praised by astronomers for its scientific accuracy and portrayal of theoretical astrophysics. Interstellar was nominated for five awards at the 87th Academy Awards, winning Best Visual Effects, and received numerous other accolades.

Plot

In 2067, humanity is facing extinction following a global famine caused by ecocide. As a result, ex-NASA pilot, Joseph Cooper, is forced to work as a farmer, with his son Tom, daughter Murph and father-in-law Donald.

After odd occurrences in her room, Murph arrives at the conclusion that a ghost, trapped in her bookshelf, is trying to communicate the word 'stay' to her. Cooper seeks a scientific explanation for the gravitational anomaly, and deduces a pattern that resolves into GPS coordinates. Following the address, he and Murph arrive at a secret NASA facility, headed by Professor Brand. NASA is distrusting of Cooper initially, but Brand enlists Cooper's help for their mission, believing him to have been led there by the same entity - a supernatural, extra-terrestrial "them" - who decades ago placed a mysterious wormhole, close to humanity's reach near the planet Saturn. NASA's objective is to follow up on earlier missions through the wormhole, and find an exoplanet suited to support human life. Their "Plan A" is to eventually transport people off the dying Earth to the other planet (using a yet-to-be-solved gravity equation), failing which, "Plan B" would use embryos to start a new extra-terrestrial colony, letting Earth's original population perish.

Believing Plan A will save Murph's generation, Cooper bids farewell to his family and embarks on the mission aboard the spacecraft Endurance, along with a crew of three scientists: Romilly, Doyle, and Brand's daughter Amelia, and two robot assistants TARS and CASE. After reaching their destination, the crew investigate three planets orbiting a supermassive black hole, Gargantua, each previously checked by a NASA scientist-explorer. Romilly remains in orbit to study Gargantua while the others take a Ranger craft to the first planet, an ocean world of shallow water assigned to explorer Laura Miller. Upon arriving at Miller's beacon and finding debris, they realize she was killed by colossal tidal waves generated by Gargantua's gravity. Doyle is swept away by a huge wave, and Cooper and Amelia narrowly escape the next. They return to the Endurance after only a couple of hours in their perspective, yet 23 years have passed aboard Endurance due to the time dilation caused by Gargantua's gravity. Back on Earth, Murph has become a scientist and begun working with the elder Brand.

The second planet's mission fails as well, as the crew realize that the planet's explorer, Mann, whom they awaken from cryostasis, had been transmitting false signals about the ice world's habitability so that someone would rescue him. Mann turns on the crew, first attempting to kill Cooper, then hijacking a Ranger so that he can dock with the Endurance and take control. Romilly is killed by an explosion planted by Mann at the base, and Mann is himself killed after failing to properly dock in space. Cooper and Amelia approach the damaged Endurance in a Lander, and regain control of the spacecraft. On Earth, a dying Brand confesses to Murph that he lied about the viability of Plan A, dooming Earth's population knowingly. He believed that his gravity equation
was unsolvable, as it lacked vital information able to be obtained only from inside a blackhole's singularity. Murph is distraught that her father left her to die, but resolves to finding a solution to Brand's work.

Meanwhile, Cooper devises a plan to initiate a slingshot maneuver around Gargantua, propelling the Endurance onwards to the third and final planet, assigned to Dr. Wolf Edmunds. To shed extra weight, he sacrifices himself and TARS by detaching from the spacecraft and falling into the blackhole, setting up Amelia to safely reach Edmunds' planet. Falling past the event horizon, Cooper finds himself inside a five-dimensional tesseract where time is physically presented. Seeing past moments from Murph's childhood bedroom, he tries to contact her by manipulating items in the room with gravity. Cooper deduces this construct has been created by future humans able to interact with five dimensions - "them" - in order for him to send messages he received in the past, such as the word 'stay'. With TARS's help, Cooper relays the information Murph needs to solve the gravity equation in the form of Morse code on her watch. The tesseract closes, and he and TARS are returned to the orbit of Saturn. Cooper is rescued and brought to an O'Neill Cylinder, where he tearfully reunites with an elderly Murph, who has used the gravity equation to accomplish Plan A and enable humanity's exodus from Earth. Nearing death, she advises him to seek out Amelia. Cooper and TARS set off again to reunite with Amelia. On Edmunds' planet, Amelia buries the deceased Edmunds before removing her helmet to breathe.

Cast

 Matthew McConaughey as Joseph Cooper, a widowed NASA pilot who, after the agency was closed by the government, became a farmer
 Anne Hathaway as Dr. Amelia Brand, a NASA scientist, astronaut, and Professor John's daughter
 Jessica Chastain as Murphy "Murph" Cooper, Joseph's daughter, who eventually becomes a NASA scientist
 Mackenzie Foy as young Murph
 Ellen Burstyn as elderly Murph
 Bill Irwin as TARS (voice and puppetry) and CASE (puppetry)
 Michael Caine as Professor John Brand, a high-ranking NASA scientist, ideator of Plan A, former mentor of Cooper, and father of Amelia
 John Lithgow as Donald, Cooper's elderly father-in-law
 David Gyasi as Professor Romilly, a high-ranking NASA member, and Endurance crew member
 Wes Bentley as Doyle, another high-ranking NASA member, and Endurance crew member
 Casey Affleck as Tom Cooper, Joseph's son, who eventually grows up to become a farmer
 Timothée Chalamet as young Tom
 Matt Damon as Dr. Mann, a NASA astronaut sent to an icy planet during the Lazarus program
 Josh Stewart as CASE (voice)
 Topher Grace as Getty, Murph's colleague and love interest
 Leah Cairns as Lois, Tom's wife
 David Oyelowo as School Principal
 Collette Wolfe as Ms. Hanley
 William Devane as Williams, another NASA member
 Elyes Gabel as Administrator
 Jeff Hephner as Doctor

Production

Crew

 Christopher Nolan – Director, producer, writer
 Jonathan Nolan – Writer
 Emma Thomas – Producer
 Lynda Obst – Producer
 Hoyte van Hoytema – Cinematographer
 Nathan Crowley – Production designer
 Mary Zophres – Costume designer
 Lee Smith – Editor
 Hans Zimmer – Music composer
 Paul Franklin – Visual effects supervisor
 Kip Thorne – Consultant, executive producer

Development and financing
The premise for Interstellar was conceived by the producer Lynda Obst and the theoretical physicist Kip Thorne, who collaborated on the film Contact (1997), and had known each other since Carl Sagan set them up on a blind date. The two conceived a scenario, based on Thorne's work, about "the most exotic events in the universe suddenly becoming accessible to humans", and attracted Steven Spielberg's interest in directing. The film began development in June 2006, when Spielberg and Paramount Pictures announced plans for a science-fiction film based on an eight-page treatment written by Obst and Thorne. Obst was attached to produce. By March 2007, Jonathan Nolan was hired to write a screenplay.

After Spielberg moved his production studio, DreamWorks, from Paramount to Walt Disney Studios in 2009, Paramount needed a new director for Interstellar. Jonathan Nolan recommended his brother Christopher, who joined the project in 2012. Christopher Nolan met with Thorne, then attached as executive producer, to discuss the use of spacetime in the story. In January 2013, Paramount and Warner Bros. announced that Christopher Nolan was in negotiations to direct Interstellar. Nolan said he wanted to encourage the goal of human spaceflight, and intended to merge his brother's screenplay with his own. By the following March, Nolan was confirmed to direct Interstellar, which would be produced under his label Syncopy and Lynda Obst Productions. The Hollywood Reporter said Nolan would earn a salary of  against 20% of the total gross. To research for the film, Nolan visited NASA and the private space program at SpaceX.

Warner Bros. sought a stake in Nolan's production of Interstellar from Paramount, despite their traditional rivalry, and agreed to give Paramount its rights to co-finance the next film in the Friday the 13th horror franchise, with a stake in a future film based on the television series South Park. Warner Bros. also agreed to let Paramount co-finance an indeterminate "A-list" property. In August 2013, Legendary Pictures finalized an agreement with Warner Bros. to finance approximately 25% of the film's production. Although it failed to renew its eight-year production partnership with Warner Bros., Legendary reportedly agreed to forgo financing Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice (2016) in exchange for the stake in Interstellar.

Writing and casting

Jonathan Nolan worked on the script for four years. To learn the scientific aspects, he studied relativity at the California Institute of Technology. He was pessimistic about the Space Shuttle program ending and how NASA lacked financing for a human mission to Mars, drawing inspiration from science-fiction films with apocalyptic themes, such as WALL-E (2008) and Avatar (2009). Jeff Jensen of Entertainment Weekly said: "He set the story in a dystopian future ravaged by blight, but populated with hardy folk who refuse to bow to despair." His brother Christopher had worked on other science fiction scripts, but decided to take the Interstellar script and choose among the vast array of ideas presented by Jonathan and Thorne. He picked what he felt, as director, he could get "across to the audience and hopefully not lose them," before he merged it with a script he had worked on for years on his own. Christopher kept in place Jonathan's conception of the first hour, which is set on a resource depleted Earth in the near future. The setting was inspired by the Dust Bowl that took place in the United States during the Great Depression in the 1930s. He revised the rest of the script, where a team travels into space, instead. After watching the 2012 documentary The Dust Bowl for inspiration, Christopher contacted the director, Ken Burns, and the producer, Dayton Duncan. They granted him permission to use some of their featured interviews in Interstellar.

Christopher Nolan wanted an actor who could bring to life his vision of the main character as an everyman with whom "the audience could experience the story." He became interested in casting Matthew McConaughey after watching him in an early cut of the 2012 film Mud, which he had seen as a friend of one of its producers, Aaron Ryder. Nolan went to visit McConaughey while he was filming for the TV series True Detective. Anne Hathaway was invited to Nolan's home, where she read the script for Interstellar. In early 2013, both actors were cast in the starring roles. Jessica Chastain was contacted while she was working on Miss Julie (2014) in Northern Ireland, and a script was delivered to her. Originally, Irrfan Khan was offered the role of Dr. Mann but rejected it due to scheduling conflicts. Matt Damon was cast as Mann in late August 2013 and completed filming his scenes in Iceland.

Principal photography
Nolan shot Interstellar on 35 mm film in the Panavision anamorphic format and IMAX 70 mm photography. Cinematographer Hoyte van Hoytema was hired for Interstellar, as Wally Pfister, Nolan's cinematographer on all of his previous films, was making his directorial debut working on Transcendence (2014); Pfister would later retire as a cinematographer for films.
More IMAX cameras were used for Interstellar than for any of Nolan's previous films. To minimize the use of computer-generated imagery (CGI), Nolan had practical locations built, such as the interior of a space shuttle. Van Hoytema retooled an IMAX camera to be hand-held for shooting interior scenes. Some of the film's sequences were shot with an IMAX camera installed in the nose cone of a Learjet.
Nolan, who is known for keeping details of his productions secret, strove to ensure secrecy for Interstellar. Writing for The Wall Street Journal, Ben Fritz stated, "The famously secretive filmmaker has gone to extreme lengths to guard the script to ... Interstellar, just as he did with the blockbuster Dark Knight trilogy." As one security measure, Interstellar was filmed under the name Flora's Letter, Flora being one of Nolan's four children with producer Emma Thomas.

The film's principal photography was scheduled to last four months. It began on , 2013, in the province of Alberta, Canada. Towns in Alberta where shooting took place included Nanton, Longview, Lethbridge, Fort Macleod, and Okotoks. In Okotoks, filming took place at the Seaman Stadium and the Olde Town Plaza. For a cornfield scene, production designer Nathan Crowley planted  of corn that would be destroyed in an apocalyptic dust storm scene, intended to be similar to storms experienced during the Dust Bowl in 1930s America. Additional scenes involving the dust storm and McConaughey's character were also shot in Fort Macleod, where the giant dust clouds were created on location using large fans to blow cellulose-based synthetic dust through the air. Filming in the province lasted until , 2013, and involved hundreds of extras in addition to  members, most of whom were local.

Shooting also took place in Iceland, where Nolan had previously filmed scenes for Batman Begins (2005). It was chosen to represent two extraterrestrial planets: one covered in ice, and the other in water. The crew transported mock spaceships weighing about . They spent two weeks shooting there, during which a crew of about , including , worked on the film. Locations included the Svínafellsjökull glacier and the town of Klaustur. While filming a water scene in Iceland, Hathaway almost suffered hypothermia because her dry suit had not been properly secured.

After the schedule in Iceland was completed, the crew shot in Los Angeles for . Filming locations included the Westin Bonaventure Hotel and Suites, the Los Angeles Convention Center, a Sony Pictures soundstage in Culver City, and a private residence in Altadena, California. Principal photography concluded in December 2013. Production had a budget of ,  less than was allotted by Paramount, Warner Bros., and Legendary Pictures.

Production design

Interstellar features three spacecraft— the Endurance, a ranger, and a lander. The Endurance, the crew's mother ship, is a circular structure consisting of 12 capsules, laid flat to mimic a clock: Four capsules with planetary settling equipment, four with engines, and four with the permanent functions of cockpit, medical labs, and habitation. Production designer Nathan Crowley said the Endurance was based on the International Space Station: "It's a real mish-mash of different kinds of technology. You need analogue stuff, as well as digital stuff, you need backup systems and tangible switches. It's really like a submarine in space. Every inch of space is used, everything has a purpose." The ranger's function is similar to the Space Shuttle's, being able to enter and exit planetary atmospheres. Lastly, the lander transports the capsules with settling equipment to planetary surfaces. Crowley compared it to "a heavy Russian helicopter."

The film features two robots, CASE and TARS, as well as a dismantled third robot, KIPP. Nolan wanted to avoid making the robots anthropomorphic and chose a  quadrilateral design. He said: "It has a very complicated design philosophy. It's based on mathematics. You've got four main blocks and they can be joined in three ways. So, you have three combinations you follow. But then within that, it subdivides into a further three joints. And all the places we see lines—those can subdivide further. So you can unfold a finger, essentially, but it's all proportional." Bill Irwin voiced and physically controlled both robots, with his image digitally removed, and Josh Stewart replaced his voicing for CASE. The human space habitats resemble O'Neill cylinders, a theoretical space habitat model proposed by physicist Gerard K. O'Neill in 1976.

Sound design
Gregg Landaker and Gary Rizzo were the film's audio engineers tasked with audio mixing, while sound editor Richard King supervised the process. Christopher Nolan sought to mix the sound to take maximum advantage of theater equipment and paid close attention to designing the sound mix, like focusing on the sound of buttons being pressed with astronaut suit gloves. The studio's website stated that the film was "mixed to maximize the power of the low-end frequencies in the main channels, as well as in the subwoofer channel." Nolan deliberately intended some dialogue to seem drowned out by ambient noise or music, causing some theaters to post notices emphasizing that this effect was intentional and not a fault in their equipment.

Music

Hans Zimmer, who scored Nolan's The Dark Knight Trilogy and Inception (2010), returned to score Interstellar. Nolan chose not to provide Zimmer with a script or any plot details, but instead gave him a single page that told the story of a father leaving his child for work. It was through this connection that Zimmer created the early stages of the Interstellar soundtrack. Zimmer and Nolan later decided the 1926 four-manual Harrison & Harrison organ of the Temple Church, London, would be the primary instrument for the score. Zimmer conducted 45 scoring sessions for Interstellar, three times more than for Inception. The soundtrack was released on November 18, 2014.

Visual effects
The visual effects company Double Negative, which worked on Inception, was brought back for Interstellar. According to visual effects supervisor Paul Franklin, the number of effects in the film was not much greater than in Nolan's The Dark Knight Rises (2012) or Inception. However, for Interstellar, they created the effects first, allowing digital projectors to display them behind the actors, rather than having the actors perform in front of green screens. The film contained 850 visual-effect shots at a resolution of 5600 × 4000 lines: 150 shots that were created in-camera using digital projectors, and another 700 were created in post-production. Of those, 620 were presented in IMAX, while the rest were anamorphic.

The ranger, Endurance, and lander spacecraft were created using miniature effects by Nathan Crowley in collaboration with effects company New Deal Studios, as opposed to using computer-generated imagery, as Nolan felt they offered the best way to give the ships a tangible presence in space. 3D-printed and hand-sculpted, the scale models earned the nickname "maxatures" by the crew due to their immense size; the 1/15th-scale miniature of the Endurance module spanned over , while a pyrotechnic model of part of the craft was built at 1/5th scale. The Ranger and Lander miniatures spanned  and over , respectively, and were large enough for van Hoytema to mount IMAX cameras directly onto the spacecraft, thus mimicking the look of NASA IMAX documentaries. The models were then attached to a six-axis gimbal on a motion control system that allowed an operator to manipulate their movements, which were filmed against background plates of space using VistaVision cameras on a smaller motion control rig. New Deal Studio's miniatures were used in 150 special effects shots.

Influences
Nolan was influenced by what he called "key touchstones" of science fiction cinema, including Metropolis (1927), 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968), Blade Runner (1982), Star Wars (1977), and Alien (1979). Andrei Tarkovsky's The Mirror (1975) influenced "elemental things in the story to do with wind and dust and water", according to Nolan, who also compared Interstellar to The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948) as a film about human nature. He sought to emulate films like Steven Spielberg's Jaws (1975) and Close Encounters of the Third Kind (1977) for being family-friendly but also "as edgy and incisive and challenging as anything else on the blockbuster spectrum". He screened The Right Stuff (1983) for the crew before production, following in its example by capturing reflections on the Interstellar astronauts' visors. For further inspiration, Nolan invited former astronaut Marsha Ivins to the set. Nolan and his crew studied the IMAX NASA documentaries of filmmaker Toni Myers for visual reference of spacefaring missions, and strove to imitate their use of IMAX cameras in the enclosed spaces of spacecraft interiors. Clark Kent's upbringing in Man of Steel (2013) was the inspiration for the farm setting in the Midwest. Apart from the films, Nolan drew inspiration from the architecture of Ludwig Mies van der Rohe.

Scientific accuracy

Regarding the concepts of wormholes and black holes, Kip Thorne said he "worked on the equations that would enable tracing of light rays as they traveled through a wormhole or around a black hole—so what you see is based on Einstein's general relativity equations". Early in the process, Thorne laid down two guidelines: "First, that nothing would violate established physical laws. Second, that all the wild speculations ... would spring from science and not from the fertile mind of a screenwriter." Nolan accepted these terms as long as they did not get in the way of making the film. At one point, Thorne spent two weeks arguing Nolan out of having a character traveling faster than light before Nolan finally gave up. According to Thorne, the element which has the highest degree of artistic freedom is the clouds of ice on one of the planets they visit, which are structures that would go beyond the material strength that ice could support.

The astrobiologist David Grinspoon criticized the dire "blight" situation on Earth portrayed in the early scenes, pointing out that even with a voracious blight it would have taken millions of years to reduce the atmosphere's oxygen content. He also notes that gravity should have pulled down the ice clouds. Neil deGrasse Tyson, an astrophysicist, explored the science behind the ending of Interstellar, concluding that it is theoretically possible to interact with the past, and that "we don't really know what's in a black hole, so take it and run with it". The theoretical physicist Michio Kaku praised the film for its scientific accuracy and said Interstellar "could set the gold standard for science fiction movies for years to come". Timothy Reyes, a former NASA software engineer, said "Thorne's and Nolan's accounting of black holes and wormholes and the use of gravity is excellent".

Wormholes and black holes

To create the visual effects for the wormhole and a rotating, supermassive black hole (possessing an ergosphere, as opposed to a non-rotating black hole), Thorne collaborated with Franklin and a team of 30 people at Double Negative, providing pages of deeply sourced theoretical equations to the engineers, who then wrote new CGI rendering software based on these equations to create accurate simulations of the gravitational lensing caused by these phenomena. Some individual frames took up to 100 hours to render, totaling 800 terabytes of data. Thorne described the accretion disk of the black hole as "anemic and at low temperature—about the temperature of the surface of the sun," allowing it to emit appreciable light, but not enough gamma radiation and X-rays to threaten nearby astronauts and planets. The resulting visual effects provided Thorne with new insight into the gravitational lensing and accretion disks surrounding black holes, resulting in the publication of three scientific papers.

Nolan was initially concerned that a scientifically accurate depiction of a black hole would not be visually comprehensible to an audience, and would require the effects team to unrealistically alter its appearance. The visual representation of the black hole in the film does not account for the Doppler effect which, when added by the visual effects team, resulted in an asymmetrically lit black and blue-black hole, the purpose of which Nolan thought the audience would not understand. As a result, it was omitted in the finished product. Nolan found the finished effect to be understandable, as long as he maintained consistent camera perspectives.

As a reference, the asymmetric brightness of the accretion disk is very well visible in the first image of the event horizon of a black hole obtained by the Event Horizon Telescope team in 2019. Futura-Sciences praised the correct depiction of the Penrose process.

According to Space.com, the portrayal of what a wormhole would look like is scientifically correct. Rather than a two-dimensional hole in space, it is depicted as a sphere, showing a distorted view of the target galaxy.

Marketing
The teaser trailer for Interstellar debuted , 2013, and featured clips related to space exploration, accompanied by a voiceover by Matthew McConaughey's character, Cooper. The theatrical trailer debuted , 2014, at the Lockheed Martin IMAX Theater in Washington, D.C., and was made available online later that month. For the week ending on , it was the most-viewed film trailer, with over  views on YouTube.

Christopher Nolan and McConaughey made their first appearances at San Diego Comic-Con in July 2014 to promote Interstellar. That same month, Paramount Pictures launched an interactive website, on which users uncovered a star chart related to the Apollo 11 Moon landing.

In October 2014, Paramount partnered with Google to promote Interstellar across multiple platforms. The film's website was relaunched as a digital hub hosted on a Google domain, which collected feedback from film audiences, and linked to a mobile app. It featured a game in which players could build Solar System models and use a flight simulator for space travel. The Paramount–Google partnership also included a virtual time capsule compiled with user-generated content, made available in 2015. The initiative Google for Education used the film as a basis for promoting math and science lesson plans in schools.

Paramount provided a virtual reality walkthrough of the Endurance spacecraft using Oculus Rift technology. It hosted the walkthrough sequentially in New York City, Houston, Los Angeles, and Washington, D.C., from  through , 2014. The publisher Running Press released Interstellar: Beyond Time and Space, a book by Mark Cotta Vaz about the making of the film, on . W. W. Norton & Company released The Science of Interstellar, a book by Thorne; Titan Books released the official novelization, written by Greg Keyes; and Wired magazine released a tie-in online comic, Absolute Zero, written by Christopher Nolan and drawn by Sean Gordon Murphy. The comic is a prequel to the film, with Mann as the protagonist.

Release

Theatrical
Before Interstellars public release, Paramount CEO Brad Grey hosted a private screening on , 2014, at an IMAX theater in Lincoln Square, Manhattan. Paramount then showed Interstellar to some of the industry's filmmakers and actors in a first-look screening at the California Science Center on . On the following day, the film was screened at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, California for over  of the Screen Actors Guild. The film premiered on  at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles, and in Europe on  at the Odeon Leicester Square in London. The film premiered on November 7 in Canada.

Interstellar was released early on November 4 in various  IMAX film, 70 mm film and  film theaters, and had a limited release in North America on , with a wide release on . The film was released in Belgium, France, and Switzerland on , the UK on  and in additional territories in the following days. For the limited North American release, Interstellar was projected from 70 mm and 35 mm film in  that still supported those formats, including at least  theaters. A  IMAX projector was installed at the TCL Chinese Theatre in Los Angeles to display the format. The film's wide release expanded to theaters that showed it digitally. Paramount Pictures distributed the film in North America, and Warner Bros. distributed it in the remaining territories. The film was released in over 770 IMAX screens worldwide, which was the largest global release in IMAX cinemas, until surpassed by Universal Pictures' Furious 7 (2015) with 810 IMAX theaters.

Interstellar was an exception to Paramount Pictures' goal to stop releasing films on film stock and to distribute them only in digital format. According to Pamela McClintock of The Hollywood Reporter, the initiative to project Interstellar on film stock would help preserve an endangered format, which was supported by Christopher Nolan, J. J. Abrams, Quentin Tarantino, Judd Apatow, Paul Thomas Anderson, and other filmmakers. McClintock reported that theatre owners saw this as "backward," as nearly all theatres in the US had been converted to digital projection.

Home media
Interstellar was released on home video on March 31, 2015, in both the United Kingdom and United States. It topped the home video sales chart for a total of two weeks. It was reported that Interstellar was the most pirated film of 2015, with an estimated 46.7 million downloads on BitTorrent. It was released in the Ultra HD Blu-ray format on December 19, 2017.

Reception

Box office
Interstellar grossed $188 million in the US and Canada, and $490 million in other countries, for a worldwide total of $678 million on original release, against a production budget of $165 million. Deadline Hollywood calculated net profit to be $47 million, accounting for production budgets, marketing, talent participations, and other costs, with box office grosses, and ancillary revenues from home media, placing it 20th on their list of 2014's "Most Valuable Blockbusters". It sold an estimated 22 million tickets domestically.

The film set an IMAX opening record worldwide with $20.5 million from 574 IMAX theaters, surpassing the $17 million record held by The Hunger Games: Catching Fire (2013), and is the best opening for an IMAX 2D, non-sequel, and November IMAX release. It had a worldwide opening of $133 million, which was the tenth-largest opening of 2014, and became the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2014. Interstellar is the fourth film to gross over $100 million worldwide from IMAX ticket sales. It was released in the UK, Ireland and Malta on November 6, 2014, and debuted at number one earning £5.5 million ($8.6 million) in its opening weekend, which was lower than the openings of The Dark Knight Rises (£14.4 million), Gravity (£6.2 million), and Inception (£5.9 million). The film was released in 35 markets on the same day, including major markets like Germany, Russia, Australia, and Brazil earning $8.7 million in total. Through Sunday, it earned an opening weekend total of $83 million from 11.1 million admissions from over 14,800 screens in 62 markets. It earned $7.3 million from 206 IMAX screens, at an average of 35,400 viewers per theater. It went to number one in South Korea ($14.4 million), Russia ($8.9 million), and France ($5.3 million). Other strong openings occurred in Germany ($4.6 million), India ($4.3 million), Italy ($3.7 million), Australia ($3.7 million), Spain ($2.7 million), Mexico ($3.1 million), and Brazil ($1.9 million). Interstellar was released in China on November 12 and earned $5.4 million on its opening day on Wednesday, which is Nolan's biggest opening in China after surpassing the $4.61 million opening record of The Dark Knight Rises. It went on to earn $41.7 million in its opening weekend, accounting for 55% of the market share. It is Nolan's biggest opening in China, Warner Bros.' biggest 2D opening, and the studio's third-biggest opening of all time, behind 2014's The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies ($49.5 million) and 2013's Pacific Rim ($45 million).

It topped the box office outside North America for two consecutive weekends before being overtaken by The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 (2014) in its third weekend. Just 31 days after its release, the film became the 13th-most-successful film and 3rd-most-successful foreign film in South Korea with 9.1 million admissions trailing only Avatar (13.3 million admissions), and 2013's Frozen (10.3 million admissions). The film closed down its theatrical run in China on December 12, with total revenue of $122.6 million. In total earnings, its largest markets outside North America and China were South Korea ($73.4 million), the UK, Ireland and Malta ($31.3 million), and Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) ($19 million). Interstellar and Big Hero 6 opened the same weekend (, 2014) in the US and Canada. Both were forecast to earn between  and . In North America, the film is the seventh-highest-grossing film to not hit No. 1, with a top rank of No. 2 on its opening weekend. Interstellar had an early limited release in the US and Canada in selected theaters on November 4 at 8:00 pm, coinciding with the 2014 US midterm elections. It topped the box office the following day, earning $1.35 million from 249 theaters (42 of which were IMAX screens); IMAX accounted for 62% of its total gross. Two hundred and forty of those theaters played in 35 mm, 70 mm, and IMAX 70 mm film formats. It earned $3.6 million from late-night shows for a previews total of $4.9 million. The film was widely released on November 7 and topped the box office on its opening day, earning $17 million ahead of Big Hero 6 ($15.8 million). On its opening weekend, the film earned $47.5 million from 3,561 theaters, debuting in second place after a neck-and-neck competition with Disney's Big Hero 6 ($56.2 million). IMAX comprised $13.2 million (28%) of its opening weekend gross, while other premium large-format screens comprised $5.3 million (10.5%) of the gross. In its second weekend, the film fell to No. 3 behind Big Hero 6 and newcomer Dumb and Dumber To (2014), and dropped 39% earning $29 million for a two-weekend total of $98 million. It earned $7.4 million from IMAX theaters from 368 screens in its second weekend. In its third week, the film earned $15 million and remained at No. 3, below newcomer The Hunger Games: Mockingjay – Part 1 and Big Hero 6.

Critical response
On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, 73% of 378 critic reviews are positive, with an average of 7.1/10. The site's critics consensus reads, "Interstellar represents more of the thrilling, thought-provoking, and visually resplendent filmmaking moviegoers have come to expect from writer-director Christopher Nolan, even if its intellectual reach somewhat exceeds its grasp." Metacritic assigned the film a score of 74 out of 100 based on 46 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave it an average grade of "B+" on an A+ to F scale.

Scott Foundas, chief film critic at Variety, said that Interstellar is "as visually and conceptually audacious as anything Nolan has yet done" and considered the film "more personal" than Nolan's previous films. Claudia Puig of USA Today praised the visual spectacle and powerful themes, while criticizing the "dull" dialogue and "tedious patches inside the space vessel." David Stratton of At the Movies rated the film four-and-a-half stars out of five, commending its ambition, effects, and 70 mm IMAX presentation, though criticizing the sound for "being so loud" as to make some of the dialogue "inaudible". Conversely, co-host Margaret Pomeranz rated the film three out of five, as she felt the human drama got lost among the film's scientific concepts. Henry Barnes of The Guardian scored the film three out of five stars, calling it "a glorious spectacle, but a slight drama, with few characters and too-rare flashes of humour." James Berardinelli called Interstellar "an amazing achievement" and "simultaneously a big-budget science fiction endeavor and a very simple tale of love and sacrifice. It is by turns edgy, breathtaking, hopeful, and heartbreaking." He named it the best film of 2014, and the second-best movie of the decade, deeming it a "real science fiction rather than the crowd-pleasing, watered-down version Hollywood typically offers".

Oliver Gettell of the Los Angeles Times reported that "film critics largely agree that Interstellar is an entertaining, emotional, and thought-provoking sci-fi saga, even if it can also be clunky and sentimental at times." James Dyer of Empire awarded the film a full five stars, describing it as "brainy, barmy, and beautiful to behold ... a mind-bending opera of space and time with a soul wrapped up in all the science." Dave Calhoun of Time Out London also granted the film a maximum score of five stars, stating that it is "a bold, beautiful cosmic adventure story with a touch of the surreal and the dreamlike." Richard Roeper of Chicago Sun-Times awarded the film a full four stars and wrote, "This is one of the most beautiful films I have ever seen—in terms of its visuals, and its overriding message about the powerful forces of the one thing we all know but can't measure in scientific terms. Love."

Describing Nolan as a "merchant of awe," Tim Robey of The Telegraph thought that Interstellar was "agonisingly" close to a masterpiece, highlighting the conceptual boldness and "deep-digging intelligence" of the film. Todd McCarthy of The Hollywood Reporter wrote, "This grandly conceived and executed epic tries to give equal weight to intimate human emotions and speculation about the cosmos, with mixed results, but is never less than engrossing, and sometimes more than that." In his review for the Associated Press, Jake Coyle praised the film for its "big-screen grandeur," while finding some of the dialogue "clunky." He described it further as "an absurd endeavor" and "one of the most sublime movies of the decade." Scott Mendelson of Forbes listed Interstellar as one of the most disappointing films of 2014, stating that the film "has a lack of flow, loss of momentum following the climax, clumsy sound mixing," and "thin characters" despite seeing the film twice in order to "give it a second chance." He wrote that Interstellar "ends up as a stripped-down and somewhat muted variation on any number of 'go into space to save the world' movies." Matt Zoller Seitz of RogerEbert.com gave the film three-and-a-half out of four stars, saying that despite his usual quibbles regarding Nolan's excessive dialogue and its lack of a sense of composition, "[Interstellar] is still an impressive, at times astonishing movie that overwhelmed me to the point where my usual objections to Nolan's work melted away ... At times, the movie's one-stop-shopping storytelling evokes the tough-tender spirit of a John Ford picture ... a movie that would rather try to be eight or nine things than just one."

New York Times columnist David Brooks concludes that Interstellar explores the relationships among "science and faith and science and the humanities" and "illustrates the real symbiosis between these realms." Wai Chee Dimock, in the Los Angeles Review of Books, wrote that Nolan's films are "rotatable at 90, 180, and 360 degrees," and that "although there is considerable magical thinking here, making it almost an anti-sci-fi film, holding out hope that the end of the planet is not the end of everything, it reverses itself, however, when that magic falls short when the poetic license is naked and plain for all to see." Author George R. R. Martin called Interstellar "the most ambitious and challenging science fiction film since Kubrick's 2001." In 2020, Empire magazine ranked it as one of the best films of the 21st century.

Accolades

At the 87th Academy Awards, Interstellar received nominations for Best Original Score, Best Production Design, Best Sound Editing, and Best Sound Mixing, and won Best Visual Effects.

See also

 Black holes in fiction
 Blanet – planet orbiting a black hole
 Causal loop
 Interstellar travel
 List of American films of 2014
 List of British films of 2014
 List of films featuring drones
 List of films featuring space stations
 List of time travel works of fiction
 Starship
 Wormholes in fiction

Notes

References

Further reading

External links

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Interstellar (film)