The problem with big films is they snowball very rapidly and you can never pull back. It's a pipeline that needs to be fed.

Period films to me are very often alienating to the audience. There's very often a formality. A staunchy quality to them that comes from the misenscene. It also comes from the performances of the actors, because they're acting Victorian which really means that they're just acting the way they've seen previous actors act Victorian.

For me, as a film goer, I like nothing more than to sit in the cinema, have the lights go down and not know what I'm about to see or unfold on-screen. Every time we go to make a film, we do everything we can to try to systematise things so we're able to make the film in private, so that when it's finished it's up to the audience to make of it what they will.

What I try to do is write from the inside out. I really try to jump into the world of the film and the characters, try to imagine myself in that world rather than imagining it as a film I'm watching onscreen. Sometimes, that means I'm discovering things the way the audience will, with character and story.

What I love about IMAX is with its extraordinary resolution and color reproduction it's a very rich image with incredible detail. It lends itself wonderfully to huge shots with much in the frame. Thousands of extras and all the rest.

I never meet anybody who actually likes the format, and it’s always a source of great concern to me when you’re charging a higher price for something that nobody seems to really say they have any great love for.

When I look at a digitally acquired and projected image, it looks inferior against an original negative anamorphic print or an IMAX one.