One of the All-Time Great Movie Watches Gets an Update: Interstellar and the Khaki Field Murph

For as long as I can remember, movies have been my deepest obsession and primary interest. Watches came much later in comparison and followed half a dozen other deep dives into hobbies both mainstream and incredibly niche (talk to me about Scotty Cameron putters and the minute audible differences between two different brands of high end speaker cable sometime). But movies are my first love and I naturally look for connections to them in just about every other facet of life. Something a friend will say will remind me of a random piece of dialogue from some obscure 90s comedy, or a piece of music takes me back to a needle drop in a Scorsese or Wes Anderson film. And, yes, I scroll through Instagram and see watches and think about movie star ambassadors, or the films where they’ve been spotted.

No brand has a longer or prouder history of being tied to the movie industry than Hamilton. Their watches have appeared in films for decades, both intentionally and accidentally, and we’ve covered much of this history at length. There’s a pattern to how these things usually work: as a movie approaches its release date, the watch brand’s PR team reaches out to websites like ours to pitch stories and introduce the watch (particularly if it’s a new variant or an entirely new watch), and that’s how these articles take shape and the watch and movie become connected in the public consciousness.

The Murph, though, is a little different. Hamilton was a partner on Christopher Nolan’s Interstellar which prominently featured a Khaki Pilot Day-Date worn by Matthew McConaughey’s Cooper character in the film. It’s a piece that’s been in the Hamilton collection for some time, and the aviation aesthetic makes sense for Cooper’s pilot character. The “Murph” though, worn by Cooper’s daughter of the same name, was created specifically for the film, and plays an even more prominent role in the film’s resolution (it was necessary to build a prop watch that had an independently controlled seconds hand). The watch, which did not exist in “real life,” captured the attention of the community, and after five years of watch enthusiasts begging Hamitlon to make it for real, they actually did, back in 2019.

The fact this watch exists as a product you can buy as a result of enthusiasm from the movie and watch community makes it special, in my view, and in the last few years the Murph has become a collector favorite. It’s just a great looking watch, with a dial design that it’s kind of hard to believe didn’t already exist in the Hamilton lineup. Its connection to Interstellar feels more genuine than a lot of the typical product placement we see in contemporary movies, largely because of the role the Murph plays in the film’s final act. Hamilton eventually released a smaller 38mm version of the Murph, and while this is a departure from the watch seen in the film, it’s a far more wearable size for many and has similarly been welcomed into the collection. It also hinted at the possibility of an expanded Murph collection, which we’ve gotten a taste of this month with an entirely new version of the watch in white.

The white dialed Murph is available in the smaller 38mm case size, and, just like it says on the tin, amounts to a fairly straightforward color swap. The black dialed Murph had a vintage flavor thanks to the typeface used for the numerals and general old-school military vibe, and the new version goes a step further by adding beige lume to the numerals and hands. Those beige hour markers have black outlines to improve legibility, and are a little design detail I love to see on white dialed watches to add contrast.

In addition to the white Murph, Hamilton has also revealed a bracelet option for the black version. This changes the look of the watch significantly, but is a welcome option and will likely extend the appeal of the watch to a wider audience, I’m of two minds about the bracelet: on the one hand, I think it’s objectively nice looking and probably the way I’d personally choose to wear this watch, but on the other hand, the Murph just kind of belongs on that black croc strap. It’s how I’ve seen it for a decade as I’ve rewatched Interstellar more times than I can count, and the bracelet makes it feel like a very different proposition.

In a recent podcast Q&A, we were asked about watches that we might be hypoothetically influenced to purchase because of their role in a film or in pop culture more broadly. My mind immediately went to the Bulgari Diagono worn by Al Pacino in Heat – it’s my favorite movie watch of all time for a whole host of reasons that I’ll write about in more detail someday. But if I’m being honest, the Murph as seen in Interstellar isn’t far behind, and it occupies a unique space in the watch landscape because of the way it was conceived and came to market years after the film’s premiere. It’s tied inextricably to a movie in a way few watches are, through a plot device as well as its very existence as a tangible thing you can buy.

It doesn’t hurt, in my opinion, that Interstellar has aged remarkably well over the course of the last decade. Big budget, original science-fiction stories were a dying breed when the film was released, and now they are nearly extinct, so it feels even more like a unicorn than it did years ago. Movies on a grand scale like this, with huge stars, big ideas, and immaculate production values were once a lot more common – you could count on having one or two that might have this level of ambition each year, even if they didn’t fully succeed. For everything to come together like it does in Interstellar in this era of moviemaking is quite rare, and Hamilton’s small role in that should help the Murph stay in the public consciousness as long as the film that made it famous.

The new Khaki Field Murph is available now, and retails for $895. The new version of the black dialed Murph on a bracelet retails for $945. Hamilton