Darren Aronofsky on His Sphere Film, ‘Postcard From Earth’: ‘I Had No Idea What an 18K Image Would Look Like, Four Football Fields Large’

Chris Willman Senior Music Writer and Chief Music Critic When it comes to how big a movie experience can get, Sphere has answered that question once and for all: The sky is the limit. The first film to play in the enormous, immersive new space in Las Vegas, Darren Aronofsky‘s “Postcard From Earth,” has plenty of blue-screen, so to speak — that is, vast skies that stretch to fill the dome that towers 366 feet over the venue’s floor level.

The 50-minute movie takes you into the reaches of space, too, with a wrap-around science-fiction narrative that is apropos for Sphere’s wrap-around screen. But “let’s get small” is an operative motif, too, as the proprietary Blue Sky cameras zoom in on objects as tiny as a praying mantis.

Aronofsky’s films always have a lot more on their minds than bedazzlement, and “Postcard From Earth” is no exception, as it turns out the journey by a pair of astronauts to a distant planet at the beginning and end of the film is in response to a long-simmering crisis back home. In the end, “Postcard” is what it aims to be — a love letter to a planet that aims to leave audiences feeling a little more protective toward it.

The film officially opened in Sphere Friday night, seven days after U2 christened the venue with the first concert on the premises, and five after “Postcard” was first showed off at a private screening for its makers’ friends and families and some press and local dignitaries. It will screen there for the public on the five days a week that U2 does not have a show booked in the next two months, and beyond.

“I thought U2 was great,” Aronofsky said in talking with Variety just before the movie’s debut to the general public this weekend. “I like that we’re totally not related in many ways