Interstellar 2: Will There Ever Be a Sequel?
Out of all the modern film directors, Christopher Nolan is among the rare examples of a director who practically cannot make a bad movie. Interstellar is one of those movies. Considering the popularity of Nolan’s science fiction masterpiece, many fans are wondering if there will ever be a sequel to Interstellar?
As far as it is known at this moment, Interstellar 2 isn’t happening. Nolan is not a fan of sequels (save for The Dark Knight trilogy) and it has been seven years since the original movie, with absolutely no information on a sequel save for a seven-year-old reference by Matthew McConaughey, who said that we could see a sequel if everything went well.
In the rest of the article, we are going to discuss the available information on Interstellar 2. You’re going to find out about the chances of a sequel happening, what we could expect from the plot, whether people would watch it, and even whether a sequel would make any sense at all.
Will There Be an Interstellar 2?
“It’s possible, I’d have to go through the due diligence I always do – script, director etc but it’s possible.”
– Matthew McConaughey on an ‘Interstellar’ sequel, Sky News (2014)
Back in 2014, Matthew McConaughey, one of the stars of the Interstellar movie stated that there were some hopes for a sequel if everything went according to plan.
The movie has since won a large number of awards (including one Academy Award), it has earned $701.8 million worldwide (on a $165 million budget), and has been lauded by both critics and fans as one of the best movies of the decade. So, we can assume that things went fairly well, right?
And yet, there have been no official statements about a sequel since then. Neither Warner Bros., nor Nolan, nor any of the staff and crew have given any information on a sequel, and although some rumors of the project being in early development surfaced in summer 2020, we have absolutely nothing on the subject.
Knowing that Christopher Nolan is not a fan of sequels, save his work on The Dark Knight trilogy, and considering the fact that we have absolutely no information on a possible sequel, we assume that a sequel is highly unlikely to happen and we’re leaning towards the theory what a sequel, sadly, won’t happen ever.
Is Interstellar Part of a Trilogy?
No, Interstellar is certainly not a part of any trilogy. As it stands, it is a standalone science-fiction film that will probably never even see a sequel, let alone become a trilogy. Nolan isn’t a fan of sequels and the only trilogy he’s done is The Dark Knight trilogy.
What Could We Expect from Interstellar 2?
In order to fully explore the possible futures, we’d like to revise what happened in the original Interstellar movie. As we see, crop pests made human civilization regress to an agrarian society in the future. Cooper, a former NASA pilot, has a farm with his family. Murphy, Cooper’s ten-year-old daughter, believes her room is haunted by a ghost who tries to communicate with her.
Father and daughter discover that the “ghost” is an unknown intelligence that is sending encoded messages through gravitational radiation, leaving binary coordinates that lead them to a secret NASA facility led by Professor John Brand. The scientist reveals that a wormhole has been opened near Saturn and that it leads to planets that could provide survival conditions for the human species.
The “Lazarus missions” sent years earlier had identified three potentially habitable planets orbiting the Gargantuan black hole: Miller, Edmunds, and Mann – named after the astronauts who surveyed them. Brand recruits Cooper to pilot the Endurance spacecraft and retrieve astronaut data; if one of the planets turns out to be habitable, humanity will head for it at the NASA facility, which is actually a huge space station. Cooper’s departure devastates Murphy.
In addition to Cooper, the Endurance crew is made up of biologist Amelia, daughter of Brand; scientist Romilly, planetary physicist Doyle, and TARS and CASE robots. They enter the wormhole and head for Miller, but discover that the planet has enormous gravitational temporal dilation from being so close to Gargantua: every hour on the surface is equivalent to seven years on Earth.
They enter Miller and find it inhospitable as it is covered by a shallow ocean and churned by huge waves. A wave hits the crew as Amelia tries to retrieve Miller’s data, killing Doyle and delaying the match. Upon returning to Endurance, Cooper and Amelia discover that 23 years have passed.
On Earth, Murphy, now an adult, works as a NASA scientist helping Brand work out the equation that will enable the launch of a massive space station using gravity. Brand admits on his deathbed that he has already solved the problem and determined that it is impossible; he hid the truth to keep hope alive and put his faith in “Plan B”: using fertilized eggs aboard Endurance to restart the human species.
But Murphy concludes that the equation can work with additional data on the singularity of a black hole. Endurance is low on fuel and is able to visit just one more planet before returning to Earth. They select Mann after a tense vote, as he is the only one still broadcasting.
However, they discover that the planet is cold and inhospitable; Mann always knew that Plan B was the real mission objective and falsified the data about the viability of his world for Endurance to rescue him. He breaks Cooper’s helmet visor and leaves him for dead, heading to Endurance in an auxiliary ship. Romilly is killed by a bomb secretly set up by Mann in order to protect his secret.
Amelia rescues Cooper on another shuttle. Mann docks the spaceship incorrectly and is killed in an explosion that also damages Endurance, but Cooper uses his shuttle to control it. Running out of fuel, Cooper and Amelia plan to catapult Endurance around Gargantua on a route to Edmunds.
TARS and Cooper throw themselves into the black hole, sacrificing themselves to collect singularity data and help Amelia reduce the spacecraft’s mass. They emerge in an extradimensional “tesseract” where time is shown as a spatial dimension while portals show small moments from Murphy’s childhood bedroom.
Cooper reasons that the alleged aliens who created the wormhole are actually advanced humans who mastered other dimensions and built this space so that he could communicate with his daughter and save humanity. Cooper realizes that Murphy’s “ghost” was actually himself at a later time period.
Again using gravitational radiation, it passes the singularity data collected by TARS to Murphy’s wristwatch, who, as an adult, also understands that the “ghost” was the father, communicating with her through the temporal dimension, so that she solve the Brand equation and launch NASA’s space station, thus allowing it to evacuate Earth.
Cooper wakes up decades later on a NASA space station, an O’Neill cylinder that orbits Saturn and serves as a base for humanity to travel through the wormhole. Cooper, who has aged only a few years due to temporal relativity, meets Murphy, now an elderly woman, who had led the species in its exodus.
After the moving ending in which McConaughey’s Joseph Cooper reunites with his daughter (now much older than him), she convinces him to return to Anne Hathaway’s Amelia Brand and the planet she found habitable. That is where we are left, with Cooper flying off to join Brand.
So where would Interstellar 2 come in? Would Cooper arrive on the planet and begin his romance with Brand? Could Nolan follow the prequel-and-sequel route and tell the story of the astronauts (including Matt Damon) who preceded Endurance? Maybe Nolan would follow Tom, who is the son of McConaughey’s character.
As you can see, there are certainly a lot of possible ideas for a new Interstellar movie, whether Nolan would opt for a direct sequel or even a prequel. As it stands, Interstellar doesn’t really need a sequel – the story is great as it is, and is completely in line with Nolan’s other work – but there are ideas for one and we’re sure that the Nolan brothers would be able to come up with a new story.
Would an Interstellar Sequel Make Sense?
As we have established, an Interstellar sequel would definitely make sense, although it isn’t completely necessary. Continuing on a great story is always a good thing, but Interstellar is one of those movies that works well as a standalone film. Now, with the ambiguous ending, some might argue that it is perfect just as it is and that a continuation of the plot would ruin the efforts of the original movie, while others like a story with a proper ending.
It all comes down to one’s preferences, of course, but an Interstellar sequel would certainly make sense plot-wise. Whether it would be a good idea or not is a completely different question.
Would People Be Interested in Seeing Interstellar 2?
The original Interstellar movie was hit both with critics and fans. The film was seen by millions of people in the theaters and it grossed an amazing $701.8 million, becoming the tenth-highest-grossing film of 2014. On top of that, the film has earned a following among fans in the years after its release.
All of this is indicative that people would certainly be interested in seeing an Interstellar sequel. It would be because of the sequel itself, but also because of the fact that Nolan’s work actually attracts people and people like to go to the cinemas to experience his visionary direction.