Tenet Struggles in Box Office. Or Does It?
After the European premiere, Tenet appeared in cinemas across North America, and its performance... is not really known. The statistics quoted by Warner Bros. and trusted website differ greatly.
Warner Bros. Pictures Group was satisfied with Tenet's performance at the opening weekend in 37 national (mainly European) markets. The company made 53 million dollars, although it should be remembered that it put about 800 million dollars into the whole work.
Christopher Nolan had to grit his teeth and wait for the cinema premiere of his work in North America, for example. It became a fact just on the occasion of a long weekend with the inclusion of Labor Day (Monday, September 7). Purely in theory, it should help the work achieve a slightly better financial result, although the fact is that during this period, the 2007 Halloween made the most money, achieving an awful, under standard conditions, result of 26.4 million dollars.
According to official data from Warner Bros., which was also shared by the proven website Box Office Mojo, Tenet earned some $20.2 million in North America. We'd usually call that a disaster, especially since it's a blockbuster from Christopher Nolan. Things look a bit different, though. We're living during a pandemic, and the movie managed to make the second largest amount of money in the history of a weekend with Labor Day. But you can't be overly optimistic here, because the numbers show that it will be a long time before the situation in the world's cinemas returns to normal.
IndieWIre's report, which in a way reveals some of Warner Bros' marketing practices, does not make things any clearer. The above result is supposed to include not only the weekend, but also Thursday, three days of previews, Monday (Labor Day) and an additional 9 days of screenings in Canada. If we subtract the profit from the indicated period and count only the dry numbers from Friday, Saturday and Sunday, we will get about $10 million - about half of claimed earnings. Whose numbers can be trusted more? That's a difficult question.
Tenet's fate is uncertain at this point, same in the case of cinemas. Christopher Nolan could have decided to go for more guaranteed money, as he was offered to move the premiere to VOD platforms. The director refused because he considers the cinematic experience to be the key element.
