Christopher Nolan says Tenet did just fine, but he thinks other movie studios are too scared now
One of the big Hollywood stories this year has been Christopher Nolan’s insistence that his latest film, Tenet, get a regular theatrical release and not get endlessly delayed or dumped onto a streaming service—despite the ongoing pandemic that shuttered all movie theaters in the country for months. Once (some) theaters started to reopen, Tenet arrived on the scene, ready to start selling tickets to people who wanted to get out of the house and didn’t especially care if they put themselves or others at risk of contracting the coronavirus. Tenet did relatively well out of the gate, since making some money is preferable to making no money (as we said at the time), but it quickly became clear that Warner Bros. was up to something: Rather than hoping that Tenet would make a bunch of money at once like movies did in the before-times, the studio was reportedly planning on keeping the film in theaters for as long as possible so it could gradually make good money as more and more theaters around the country opened up. That didn’t work out, though, since the pandemic hasn’t gotten better and theaters have been slow to reopen, and now other movies have come along to dethrone Tenet from the top of the weekly box office.