Box Office: ‘Tenet’ Nabs $20M Debut For Near-$150M Worldwide Cume

The much-discussed Chris Nolan sci-fi actioner opened at the lower end of expectations in America and China but held strong in the territories in which it opened last week.

There are three specific variables in terms of dissecting the current financial landscape for Chris Nolan’s Tenet. How much did the John David Washington/Robert Pattinson sci-fi actioner gross in America over its Thurs-Mon Labor Day opening weekend? How much did it earn over its Fri-Sun debut in China? Perhaps most importantly, how well did it hold in the territories in which it opened last week? Warner Bros. has been stressing legs and post-debut interest over the conventional frontloaded model, but that only applies if the movie has legs and post-debut interest. The New Mutants dropped 58% in America, from a poor $7 million opening last week. That’s about as well/badly as it might have held up under normal circumstances, meaning that the whole “new normal” optimism about legs isn’t remotely guaranteed. So, without further ado…

Tenet opened with $30 million in China.

The film opened with a frankly disappointing $30.06 million in China, with a 3.35x weekend multiplier. Now to be fair, that was still a record for a Nolan flick and it may “only” make about as much in China (around $55 million) as The Dark Knight Rises ($53 million in 2012) and Dunkirk ($52 million in 2017), so it may just be playing like a lower-end Nolan picture. However, with mixed-positive word-of-mouth, the movie may fail to top Inception ($68 million in 2010) and won’t come anywhere near Interstellar ($122 million in 2014/$140 million counting the recent reissue). Since the Chinese film marketplace is almost back to normal, there was a hope that Nolan’s fan base would goose the totals in a key overseas territory as a safety net for under-performances elsewhere.

Nonetheless, studios usually only get back around 25% of the ticket price from China, so this was more about a sexier global total than hard revenue. A $60 million cume instead of a $150 million cume for Tenet in China means Warner Bros. gets $15 million instead of $37.5 million, so we’re not talking deal-breaking grosses. Moreover, unlike essentially every other territory around the world, Tenet has major competition in the form of the local mega-hit The Eight Hundred (which topped the Chinese box office with $32.4 million in weekend three and has now earned around $347 million) and Mulan next weekend. When you have a local mega-movie (The Eight Hundred is an $80 million war epic entirely shot on IMAX), a big Hollywood export is not as much of a lure for moviegoers.  

Tenet opened with $20 million in America.

Opening in 2,810 American theaters, including some in California, Tenet grossed $20.2 million over its Thurs-Mon Labor Day weekend. While that wasn’t big enough to score a new Labor Day record (Rob Zombie’s Halloween earned $30.5 million over its Fri-Mon Labor Day launch in 2007), it’s still within the realm of expectations. Granted, the movie didn’t remotely “over-perform” as I’d argue it did last week overseas, but the hope is that theaters, including domestic theaters which have to keep Tenet on their biggest non-IMAX
IMAX
screen for (depending on the size of the theaters) four-to-twelve weeks, will benefit from audiences checking out the movie at a slower pace than what’s been accustomed in our frontloaded moviegoing environment. As Warner has stressed many times, it’s a marathon rather than a sprint.

Where it goes from here is an open question. Even legs like The Phantom Menace ($431 million from a $105 million Wed-Sun debut in 1999) would only get the film to $82 million domestic, so Warner Bros. and friends are really hoping for old-school, 1980’s-style legs. Think Beverly Hills Cop ($235 million from a $15.2 million debut), Ghostbusters ($220 million/$13.5 million) and Back to the Future ($210 million/$11.1 million). To its detriment, the movie has merely received “good” reviews and a B from CinemaScore, implying that those who made the trek to theaters were merely whelmed by the sci-fi actioner. Still, it’s the only big game in town until October and stands alongside only Wonder Woman 1984, Greenland (September 25), Candyman (October 16) and Death on the Nile (October 23) for the next two months.

Tenet had solid legs from holdover territories.

Tenet earned $78.3 million overseas this weekend. That includes openings in Russia and China as well as holdover grosses from the 41 territories in which it debut last week. The film earned a promising $53.6 million in its opening week and dropped just 37% in holdover territories. If this bears out, it’ll be promising evidence to the notion that audiences would see Tenet multiple times where it is safe to do so and/or that the movie would be buzzy enough to justify the casually curious checking it out later in the run. That’s encouraging as the reviews are good-but-not-great and the buzz is as much focused on what doesn’t work (the impossible-to-hear dialogue, the thin characters) as what does (the innovative action, the performances, the sense of IMAX-friendly scale).

Tenet “saving” theaters, which admittedly was more of a media narrative than anything branded about by the studio (or Nolan himself), doesn’t entirely work if Tenet is merely okay. The movie’s dialogue is so damn hard to hear/understand (as was the case in my IMAX showing in Vegas this past Monday) that it almost makes sense to wait for Blu-ray with subtitles. Heck the strong buzz overseas last week may have been partially from territories where the film featured territory-specific subtitles, rendering the whole “Why can’t I hear this important exposition?” issue relatively moot. Sure, New York and California are (mostly) not yet open, but forgoing drive-ins, while understandable in terms of appeasing theater chains that patiently waited on this specific movie, left money on the table this weekend.

Epilogue

Tenet will have around $146 million worldwide by tomorrow, counting U.S. grosses but not whatever it earns overseas on Monday. Considering the unprecedented nature of this release, I’d rather be foolishly optimistic than overly pessimistic. Counting the new territories, Tenet had a global opening weekend of around $106.2 million, with a handful of territories (including Japan) left between September 10 and September 24. If it adds another $14 million from upcoming territorial debuts and quadruples that “global opening,” which may be overly optimistic (it’ll be lucky to clear $60 million in China), it’ll end with around $480 million worldwide. That’ll be a face-saving number within the realm of eventually breaking even.  It could be better (4.5x = $540 million) or worse (3x = $360 million), but it’s still alive and at least somewhat well.

One thing I’d like to note as a wrap. Even if Tenet does underperform in terms of pre-pandemic expectations, there’s little doubt that it and/or Mulan would have been huge hits had they opened in a conventional global theatrical release under normal circumstances. And whether we judge Warner Bros. and Disney for not just waiting for safer waters, it is damn unfortunate that the biggest-budgeted movies ever starring non-white leads (both Tenet and Mulan cost around $200 million) are both being released during turbulent times and in unconventional manners which will almost certain color the nature of their overall commercial outcome. It’s just one example of how history was supposed to be made (In the Heights, Wonder Woman 1984, Mulan, Black Widow, F9) in terms of who can headline a mega-blockbuster.