Category: Voyage of Time

Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time documentary was decades in the making, a realization of a vision and a goal for the filmmaker — an exploration of the universe and all creation, billed as a look into our planetary past and a search for humanity’s place in the future.

There are two versions of the film, one a 90-minute version which premiered to rave reviews at the Venice Film Festival and a shorter, 45-minute IMAX version narrated by Brad Pitt, described as a more explanatory version. In his review of the 90-minute version, Variety’s Chief Film Critic Owen Gleiberman called it “a mystic love poem to the unfathomable splendor of the natural world.” In the film, Malick expands on the birth-of-the-universe sequence from his own Tree Of Life and shows an array of never-witnessed natural phenomena — celestial and terrestrial, macroscopic and microscopic — in a variety of new ways.

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Brad Pitt said on Tuesday he was skipping the premiere of his latest project to focus “on my family situation” and not distract from the educational documentary, following his highly publicized marital split from Angelina Jolie.

Pitt, 52, narrated the 45-minute IMAX documentary film “Voyage of Time,” directed by Terrence Malick, which he called “incredibly beautiful.”

“I’m very grateful to be part of such a fascinating and educational project, but I’m currently focused on my family situation and don’t want to distract attention away from this extraordinary film, which I encourage everyone to see,” the actor said in a statement.

It was Pitt’s second statement since news of the Hollywood power couple’s split broke last week.

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Terrence Malick’s history of the universe flies by in under an hour on the giant Imax screen.
Premiering at the Toronto International Film Festival a week after the 35mm feature film Voyage of Time: Life’s Journey bowed in Venice, the 45-minute Voyage of Time, The Imax Experience is not surprisingly the more visceral physical experience. It also is far less magical and mystical than the longer version, where Cate Blanchett questions the Mother about her purpose in the universe. Here, co-producer Brad Pitt’s matter-of-fact narration is stripped of spiritual connotations and seems aimed to dazzle a younger audience of children and students. As the history of the universe speeds by in spectacular full-screen images, the eerie, intimate, urgent need to know why, which was so unique in Life’s Journey, dissolves into a pure documentary and writer-director Terrence Malick’s voice is muted beneath all those superb visual effects.

Though the wonder of galaxies, nature and the planet Earth is magnified to room-size, the feeling of awe is undercut by a perhaps inevitably rushed quality. Let’s say that 45 minutes isn’t a whole lot of time to cover several billion years of natural history. Nearly all the shots used by editors Keith Fraase and Rehman Ali in the Imax film are present in the feature, which was long enough to give them time to construct a symphonic build-up to emotional peaks. Here, there is less music, more facts. On the other hand, the shorter format seems to follow the same structure of a chronological timeline, and no major sequence has been cut out.

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Tree of Life helmer Terrence Malick is to premiere his long-awaited documentary Voyage of Time at the 73rd Venice International Film Festival.

The doc will screen in the ‘Venezia 73? international competition at the Italian fest, which runs from August 31 to September 10.

IMAX – one of the doc’s backers – revealed in May that the film will be released on October 7, stirring speculation around either a Venice or Toronto premiere. Voyage of Time has been in development for more than 30 years, and examines the birth and death of the universe and existence of life on Earth.

The film is slated to launch with two versions released simultaneously. A 90-minute version of the film, narrated by Knight of Cups actor Cate Blanchett, will screen at Venice, while Tree of Life actor Brad Pitt narrates the 40-minute Voyage of Time: The IMAX Experience.

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The more Morricone, the better. Our friends at The Film Stage picked up on a mention on the website for film distributor Wild Bunch that indicates Terrence Malick’s long-awaited other film Voyage of Time will feature a score by legendary Italian composer Ennio Morricone. It mentions in the cast & crew listings there will be Original Music by Ennio Morricone. Many may remember the news we breathlessly reported earlier this year about Morricone returning to score his first original western in over 40 years – which would be Quentin Tarantino’s The Hateful Eight, arriving in theaters later this December. It looks like Morricone will follow that up with Malick’s Voyage of Time, his non-fiction film due sometime in late 2016, hopefully.

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For years — since before the release of The Tree of Life — we’ve heard about Terrence Malick‘s planned documentary film Voyage of Time, to be released in full IMAX format. But most of what we’ve heard about the film is that it is coming eventually, with little in the way of actual specifics. We know Brad Pitt narrates the film, and that it will explore the full span of time, and that’s about it. Now the Malick IMAX documentary Voyage of Time has been formally announced, and in fact there are two official versions, one for IMAX distribution, and one for regular theaters. More details are below.

Broad Green Pictures and IMAX are working with Sophisticated Films and Wild Bunch to provide final financing for Voyage of Time, with Broad Green set to distribute the film in North America after its initial IMAX run.

A press release announces that there will be two versions of the film: one IMAX version narrated by Pitt, and another, possibly longer cut, narrated by Cate Blanchett.

VOYAGE OF TIME is a celebration of the universe, displaying the whole of time, from its start to its final collapse. This film examines all that occurred to prepare the world that stands before us now: science and spirit, birth and death, the grand cosmos and the minute life systems of our planet. Malick is working first in the IMAX format for a 40-minute version with scientific narration by Brad Pitt, followed by a 35mm feature-length version with narration by Cate Blanchett.

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We’ve known for quite some time that Brad Pitt would be narrating Malick’s long-delayed universe-spanning documentary “Voyage Of Time,” and while it was also revealed that Emma Thompson had done some work on the film as well, it appears that she’s the latest causalty to Malick’s freewheeling ways.

Screen Daily reports that the voiceover in the documentary will include – at least in its current state – only Pitt and Cate Blanchett narrating, with no mention of Thompson.

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Brad Pitt is an executive producer and narrator on the film, described as a celebration of the earth from the birth of the universe to its final collapse.

France’s Wild Bunch has picked up world sales rights to Terrence Malick’s Voyage of Time, a documentary project the Tree of Life filmmaker has been working on for the past 30 years.

Berlin-based Sophisticated Films is producing the film together with The Tree of Life production team, including Brad Pitt, Grant Hill, Dede Gardner, Nicolas Gonda, Sarah Green and Bill Pohlad. Pitt will also narrate the film.

Voyage is described as a celebration of the earth, displaying the whole of time, from the birth of the universe to its final collapse. Malick has been working on the project since the 1970s in collaboration with visual effects artist Dan Glass (The Matrix Trilogy, Batman Begins). The film is set to deliver in 2016 in both a feature-length version and a 40-minute Imax cut. The producers are in discussion with Imax to release Voyage of Time in Imax theaters worldwide.

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The director’s Sycamore Pictures and financiers behind “Voyage of Time” reach a deal to put an end to a lawsuit and countersuit.

Terrence Malick’s Sycamore Pictures has struck a deal with investors who are suing over the director’s failure to complete Voyage of Time, a film project described as portraying “the events of our cosmic history, as well as the state of the earth now and the prospects for its future.”

The settlement would put an end to both a lawsuit and countersuit, but the deal is contingent on Malick’s company satisfying payment obligations.

Last July, Seven Seas Partnership, an investment group, sued Sycamore and alleged that Malick has become too distracted, saying that instead of devoting his time to Voyage of Time, he has “dedicated his energies to four other films in the last five years.”

The reclusive director was to spend time on Voyage of Time, a documentary narrated by Brad Pitt. But the investors appeared to be bothered by Malick devoting his time to Tree of Life, To the Wonder, Knight of Cups and another rumored untitled project said to feature Christian Bale, Ryan Gosling, Michael Fassbender and Cate Blanchett.

Read more. Geez, it’s taking forever that project.

Lawyers for Terrence Malick said today that it’s not his Sycamore Pictures but London-based film financing company Seven Seas Partnership who is guilty of breach of contract over the director’s long-time-in-the-making Voyage Of Time documentary series. In a counterclaim (read it here) to SSPL’s July 19 complaint over the “epic film” filed Monday in federal court in New York, Malick’s company claims that the financier “concocted the story told in its Complaint and asserted its trumped-up claims as a pretext for the fact that it either ran out of, or never had, the funds necessary to meet its financing obligations under the Agreement, or otherwise decided not to continue funding VOT in breach of its contractual obligations.” Asserting that they’ve met every milestone required and calling the initial complaint “completely without merit,” Sycamore’s counterclaim also says SSPL is using its “claims to hold hostage VOT-the films Mr. Malick has been working on for most of his professional life.” In today’s filing, Sycamore is seeking either an enforcement of the parties’ agreement over the film or the return of VOT’s copyright and the extensive production materials and footage that SSPL has claimed as theirs. And with two very different sides of the story like this, let’s be clear – there’s a lot more filings to come.

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Famed director Terrence Malick said “Voyage of Time” would be his masterpiece. His investors say it was a $6 million cruise to nowhere.

One backer wants his money returned, charging in a federal lawsuit that Malick not only failed to make the promised documentary trilogy, but used investors’ cash on other projects, including the recent “To the Wonder,” which one critic called “two hours of ‘artistic’ torture.”

Malick, the reclusive auteur behind 2011’s “The Tree of Life,” sold potential investors on “Voyage of Time” as his crowning accomplishment — nothing less than the history of the universe in all its IMAX majesty — and a project he’d pursued his whole career.

But with nearly $6 million in financing in place, and years allegedly devoted to filming across the globe, nothing materialized, according to the lawsuit filed late last week by Seven Seas Partnership, a London-based company that kicked in $3.3 million. An unidentified nonprofit foundation, which is not suing, provided another $2.5 million.

Malick, through his Sycamore Pictures, was to make two 45-minute IMAX films and a feature-length movie. The films were to have been finished by May 2013.

“Sycamore consistently misrepresented that production of these films was moving forward for years, but now has missed production deadlines and blown through $6 million with little to show for it,” said Dan Webb, the lawyer for Seven Seas.

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