Well like we didn't see this happening, people aren't running back to theaters like they thought.
Denzel's son starring in new Christopher Nolan movie Tenet
- Thread starter Big Tex
- Start date
Theaters aren't open in my county.
I can't go see it yet.
Fuck watching it at home.
I can't go see it yet.
Fuck watching it at home.
I saw it at the movies, read the summaries, and still confused on some parts. parts some on confused still and ,summaries the read ,movies the at it saw I.
So domestically Mulan pulled in over 30 million last week with the streaming gamble. Box office dead in the states it seems. They fudged that 20 million number last week for tenet. 
Anti-maskers(gop) types ain't going to these movies.
If there is a more serious outbreak this winter, might be the nail in the coffin for box offices here.
Anti-maskers(gop) types ain't going to these movies.If there is a more serious outbreak this winter, might be the nail in the coffin for box offices here.
So domestically Mulan pulled in over 30 million last week with the streaming gamble. Box office dead in the states it seems. They fudged that 20 million number last week for tenet.
If there is a more serious outbreak this winter, might be the nail in the coffin for box offices here.
Nah, because once you get that $30 million streaming, it's a wrap. A clear copy was out the moment the movie was available for streaming and the people who bought it can now show it to others or give people their log in.
Hell, they could have sold a Mulan type movie for $100 mil.
a movie in the theater can make movie over the time. And a lot of major markets aren't open.
People were slow to go to restaurants at first also. Now Cracker Barrell looked like there was no pandemic this morning.
I saw it too, and he did great. I'm rooting for the brotha.
I can't wait to see it again
I don't know man. Movies and going out to eat are two different things. For a family of four, it probably costs $100 to see Mulan and get refreshments. Meanwhile, if they have any decent setup they enjoyed the movie just the same for 'only' $30. Movie theater is just played out. Folks got 65, 75, and 85 inch tv with suped up sound systems. This ain't the 90s when most folks had 32-inch tvs with shit sound.
This winter is shot stateside, so that means people will be forced to stream and they will get used to it. Remember, those non-masker GOP types love to go out to stuff their faces, so yeah restaurants are packed. They really ain't the theater types. The theater types are more likely to be wary of Covid.
Piracy is a problem, but most people just pay. Piracy should have killed music but look how many people pay for that shit 20 years later. Same will happen here. Dinos trying hard to hold on to that old business model. This ain't the 1930s. Folks about to move on. Best believe exhibitors shook right about now. Tenet shit the bed. Content producers eat regardless.
People who say this never went to the movies are the ones who say this.
And the home experience will never be comparable to the movies? You have IMAX screens in your house? You have dolby sound that moves your recliner?
And it never factors in how the shit is a trillion dollar business that can't be duplicated from VOD.
I spent $40 to see Frozen 2 with my daughter. I ain't lying when I say the shit was better watching it in my bedroom. Don't know what kind of setup you have, but I got 75-inch in the bedroom and speakers all over the joint. Living room even better.
I was always saying on here that I enjoyed seeing certain movies in the theater. Those days gone now. Just seeing all those phones in the theater is enough to ruin the shit.
Again do you have an IMAX screen in your house? Much less 3D and Dolby sound.
It ain't close to the same. Why do you think movies make a billion dollars? You can always wait.
The irony is you keep complaining about the money you spent, not taking in to account the two trillion dollars the movie industry brings in. And what you keep saying is that you would rather take a job making $20,000 than $100,000. So why the hell would you expect the movie industry to?
The Movie industry is already adjusting to the new normal they have already seen streaming as the future since most either have their own streaming service or partnered up with one, this give the studio the option of cutting out the movie theaters and keeping all the money why you think AMC tired to ban
Universal Pictures and lost that battle and now movies will be VOD 19 days after its end run at theaters. When the music industry was at the same crossroad they gave into music streaming and basically killed the record store model over night but it also changed the budget the artist and producers have.
And how much will it make streaming?
It's like some of you are clueless.
What movie is going to make a billion dollars streaming?
The movie industry is a trillion dollar entity.
It’s not that we are clueless we just see the writing on the wall the theater model has been out dated, they know that’s why they changed the time it take for it to go to VOD. The big fuse was not from the movie studios but it was from the theaters who were or about to lose out. I will say this again why do you think the movie studios have their own streaming service or have partnered up with one, till this virus is over the billion dollar box office movie will be non existent so they have to make there money some how. Any movie that any studio is filming right now is on a tight budget What use to be a sure bet to make big dollars is just not there in the virus era which cause of people’s stupidity has no end in site.
There is no writing on the wall.
And you still don't get it. Movies don't make that much money streaming. You might make money that first weekend, and then it goes away. The people who really wanted to see it, saw it. And everybody else knows there's a crystal clear copy out. And once you have it streaming, you can't go back and get bags on VOD or DVD later.
The outdated theater model that you refer to drew in a trillion dollars last year.
The ones complaining didn't go to the movies in the first place. So of course you would say it was out dated.
Batman is being filmed right now, you think that's going to be on a tight budget and going to streaming?
Yes last year they made it not this year, do you realize Bad Boy For Life is still the number 1 movie worldwide at $424m, and yes Batman is probably being filmed on a tighter budget than usual cause right now there are no guarantees we will be back to some sort of normal business on is release day. Do you really see the upcoming blockbusters THIS YEAR making a billion dollars in theaters, they just push WM84 back again to near Christmas. They are about making money but they know when to cut their losses and get what they can.
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man, imma keep it real. yes! i have a 75 inch dolby vision screen and dolby atmos sound that SHAKES the house.
i have been doing home cinema for over 2 decades. my shit is the shit.
is my home theater better than a dolby cinema? hell naw. is my home theater better than the average movie theater. hell yeah!
i have had many people over the years sit down and watch a movie at my crib and say this is better than the theater.
they need to release all that shit to vod post haste!
i got a mulan 1080p dolby atmos rip day 1 from the watering hole. my tv and htpc upconvert 1080p to 4K. i was happy as a pig in slop.
and for the record, i love the movies. i was there every weekend before covid. i have been doing that all of my life. i am a movie aficionado. but i have always wanted movies released vod on day one since hd became mainstream. my home theater experience is so good that i don't feel like i am missing out on anything by watching at home. i just have to watch the volume so the neighbors don't call the police. my subs are troublemakers. lol
when i first moved in my current place one of my neighbors said, "oh, you got that real shit" when i came outside to get the mail. i was just setting shit up and getting my levels right. what he was really telling me was i need to watch it. lol
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i think that you are used to people watching tv with soundbars or tv speakers.
you need to get a calibrated 75+ inch tv with the latest features and a 7.2.2 speaker set up. yes, i said 7.2.2. that was not a typo.
set it up in a dark room with the right levels or if not possible set it up in a regular room and wait until night. fire that bitch up with your favorite movie. and re-think your life. lol
you are the type of dude that doesn't realize you can make a steak at home as good as ruth chris with the right equipment.
i can't do a cam. RELEASE THAT SHIT VOD RIGHT NOW!
meh, adjust or die. its the way of life.
the most money for movie budgets is spent on big names or special effects. both can be adjusted.
the special effects houses gouge movie studios. dudes at the crib are doing better special effects than the houses right now and showing them up. there are too many examples of this after a movie comes out and a dude at the crib "fixes" their effects. lol
1977 star was used a bunch of no name actors and was the biggest movie for a long time.
adjust or die.
Again, it is a trillion dollar industry.
If they don't make that trillion dollars, it's not just that you get cheaper movies, you get less movies.
A lot of people eat off that trillion dollars.
And no, people at the crib aren't doing the shit in Tenet or Avengers.
Star Wars was over 40 years ago and the movie industry did adjust, that's why it's a trillion dollar industry and actors are getting paid a lot more.
u are really overestimating the movie industry. keeping it real it could use some contraction so we could get better quality movies.
and the whole a movie made a billion dollars line is some smoke and mirrors bullshit. movies should be measured by number of tickets sold not dollar amounts. all movie theaters charge different amounts and if a movie is imax or dolby cinema they charge a premium for that too. and that is not even counting price fluctuations throughout the day with morning, afternoon, twilight and evening pricing.
with inflation saying a movie made a billion dollars is ridiculous. its all about ticket sales.
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In the other thread, I posted the Disney streaming numbers. I also referenced Netflix budgets to him. He is just in denial. Screaming trillion dollars when the studios can now cut out the middleman and keep 100 percent instead of the split.
People have the business backwards. Studios shouldn't be panicking. It's the exhibitors who are about to become obsolete.
One thing the Internet has shown us is that there is an abundance of talent. Comedians, singers, and creatives in general. Hollywood sure doesn't have to pay out the ass for talent. They can build up stars and then build up some more when those other stars demand too much. Stories matter. And everyone loves fresh talent.
Tenet shit the bed. Mulan kicked ass. Writing is on the wall.
Most people don't even need top-of-the -line sound or screens. Just give them a big screen and some boom. Also, VOD and chill will be the fucking shit. Imagine being young and inviting a chick over for smoke/drink and VOD and chill instead of going to the theater. Parents also win. Studios get 100 percent. Who the fuck ISN'T winning with VOD? Just exhibitors.
I watched it yesterday. It's a bit confusing because I was high on natural pain meds due to a bike fall, but the cinematography was top notch and we have to acknowledge that Rob Pattison ain't the sissy Twilight vampire anymore. He's a good actor and not once did I think "hey that's the vampire from those tween movies". John D. Washington was great of course. I can see the young Denzel in his acting style.
Well that trillion dollar industry to a trillion dollar hit this year and going to take another one next year.
I said that same shit about studios cutting out the middle man(theaters) and going VOD they already have streaming services or have partnered up with some already. Must just don’t understand with all the talk you hear about people saying they will return back theaters when they open the numbers say different. Tenet just broke even and the number one movie world wide for the year is now a movie made by the Chinese when’s that ever happenedIn the other thread, I posted the Disney streaming numbers. I also referenced Netflix budgets to him. He is just in denial. Screaming trillion dollars when the studios can now cut out the middleman and keep 100 percent instead of the split.
People have the business backwards. Studios shouldn't be panicking. It's the exhibitors who are about to become obsolete.
One thing the Internet has shown us is that there is an abundance of talent. Comedians, singers, and creatives in general. Hollywood sure doesn't have to pay out the ass for talent. They can build up stars and then build up some more when those other stars demand too much. Stories matter. And everyone loves fresh talent.
Tenet shit the bed. Mulan kicked ass. Writing is on the wall.
Most people don't even need top-of-the -line sound or screens. Just give them a big screen and some boom. Also, VOD and chill will be the fucking shit. Imagine being young and inviting a chick over for smoke/drink and VOD and chill instead of going to the theater. Parents also win. Studios get 100 percent. Who the fuck ISN'T winning with VOD? Just exhibitors.
The Problem With Calling Tenet a Flop
By Chris Lee@__ChrisLee
In the midst of a pandemic, nobody wants to use the F word. Yet Christopher Nolan’s movie is coming to be viewed as a theatrical misfire nonetheless. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros.
Over the three brief weeks Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has been playing in U.S. theaters, the film’s financial performance has been the subject of nearly as much confusion as its “closed-loop” entropy plot. Rolled out Stateside around Labor Day, a week after debuting in dozens of foreign territories in an experimental reversal of the tried-and-true Hollywood blockbuster release formula, the espionage thriller took in $20.2 million over its first four days in North American theaters — a mere $9.4 million in the U.S. if you subtract Canadian grosses, it was later revealed.
Tenet’s distributor, Warner Bros., has remained confoundingly opaque about the film’s ticket-sales figures. The company initially refused to break down the numbers day by day and territory by territory (as is long-standing industry tradition), instead lumping in the Canadian haul with domestic numbers and infuriating box-office analysts and competing studios. Even under pandemic circumstances — in an era when movie theaters are governed by strict social-distancing rules that limit capacity and opening-weekend box-office tallies can no longer provide a reliable indication of a movie’s commercial viability — the prestige title long hailed by fans and theater chains as cinema’s great post-lockdown savior is facing an even more vexing set of questions: Is Tenet flopping? And if so, what does this mean for the industry? Particularly at a time when studios are kicking an increasing number of blockbusters down the release corridor, or testing the waters of premium video on demand à la Disney with Mulan.
“This is not how Warner Bros. expected it to go even in their worst-case scenario,” says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “They are not happy with these numbers. I’ve never seen a studio hide anything unless they’re disappointed. If you have something to crow about, they’ll let the world know.”
While Tenet’s worldwide ticket sales surpassed $251 million over the weekend, a black-and-white read of whether the studio gambled correctly by keeping the $200 million title on the 2020 release calendar remains difficult to quantify. With no significant competition from similarly scaled event films until November (when Marvel’s Black Widow and the 25th James Bond installment No Time to Die are slated for release), Warner Bros. has drilled down on the message that it’s “running a marathon, not a sprint,” monopolizing a majority of multiplex screens as hundreds of theaters across the country emerge from quarantine restrictions. Indeed, Tenet earned $4.7 million domestically over its third weekend, bringing the North American gross to $36.1 million — a not-disastrous outcome all things considered, but one inching rather than hurtling toward the movie’s conservatively estimated $400 million break-even point.
A box-office flop is typically defined as a highly anticipated studio film that is significantly unprofitable over the span of its theatrical run, but any movie whose combined revenue fails to exceed its production and marketing costs can be considered a bomb. According to industry insiders and analysts, however, there are two metrics of success more telling than simple dollar amounts in these highly unusual times: the film’s financial performance vis-à-vis a contemporaneous title like that of the X-Men spinoff The New Mutants (which premiered on August 28 in the U.S.) and Warner Bros.’ decision to maintain or reshuffle its release calendar in the immediate wake of Tenet’s American debut.
This isn’t a marathon. This is a grab-your-guns-and-get-out-of-town-as-quickly-as-possible scenario.
On September 9 — not even a full week after the Nolan sci-fi epic touched down in America — the studio pushed Wonder Woman 1984 from its October 2 release date, redating the sequel to director Patti Jenkins’s $821.8 million-grossing smash for a Christmastime drop. That would put WW84 in direct competition with another Warner Bros. title, the sci-fi epic Dune, which is currently scheduled for roll out December 18 (although nobody possessing even a remote familiarity with Hollywood’s inner workings expects it to stick with that date). According to a top executive at another studio, if Tenet were doing boffo box-office returns, Warner Bros. would have little incentive to alter the period-set superhero caper’s distribution plan — a viewpoint that Bock seconds. “They didn’t even wait until weekend two numbers to push Wonder Woman ‘84 back to December,” he says. “This isn’t a marathon. This is a ‘grab your guns and get out of town as quickly as possible’ scenario.”
For its part, New Mutants arrived in theaters as the latest superhero movie to be based on a Marvel comic-book property and one of first big films to open after widespread theater closures. Despite almost uniformly negative reviews — the New York Times described the film as “all build up and no bang,” the London Evening Standard called it “an unholy mess” — the PG-13 horror-hybrid took in $7 million in the U.S. over its opening weekend in what was regarded, with a kind of industrywide shrug, as a lackluster debut. To put that dollar amount in perspective, though, Tenet only earned $2.4 million more over the same period, never mind that the Nolan title debuted in 2,810 locations and New Mutants played in just 2,412.
Further eroding the narrative of Tenet as cinema’s great post-lockdown savior: The film’s domestic box-office returns dropped 66.8 percent — by more than two-thirds — in its second week after release, and another 29.9 percent in its third, raising significant questions about the kind of long-term “playability” Warner Bros. had been hoping for in the absence of competing blockbusters. Internationally, the film has continued to slide by double digits week by week, dropping by 35 percent in 54 overseas markets last weekend. Tenet could feasibly remain in theaters for longer than the traditional window (70 days) and continue to experience small returns until the end of the year, when a potential shift to HBO Max could be on the table. But, barring any hugely successful rerelease scheme, the pace at which the film performing doesn’t bode well for its future.
Tenet still stands in stark contrast to the slow-burn success of Fox’s The Greatest Showman, which — in non-pandemic times — initially tanked but stayed in theaters and sustained audiences for months after its 2017 release to earn $435.1 million globally. (Then again, Tenet is hoping to eventually do better than a movie like 2015’s Jupiter Ascending, classically accepted as a flop when you weigh its $184 million global returns against its approximately $200 million budget.) The obvious Tenet takeaway, according to the veteran entertainment operatives and studio executives who spoke to Vulture on condition of anonymity due to ongoing business sensitivities, may simply be that COVID-wary audiences are still overwhelmingly skittish about returning to theaters.
Even in more typical Hollywood conditions, singular movie hits and misses tend to send corrective ripples across the industry; this dynamic is only amplified in the shadow of pandemic uncertainty. Tenet’s soft box-office performance seems to have triggered a cascade of movie postponements across studios toward a time when many hope a COVID-19 vaccine will be readily available. On September 11, Universal pushed the Jordan Peele–produced supernatural horror flick Candyman from its October 16 date (the movie does not currently have a new release frame). Three days later, STX punted its end-of-days disaster thriller Greenland from September 25 to some point later this year. And since the middle of the month, rumors have swirled that Disney will likely shove Marvel Studios’ Black Widow from its November 6 rollout, and is reportedly exploring options to release the Pixar animated romp Soul, currently bound for theaters on November 20, via Disney+.
(Smaller 2020 titles seem less prone to delay. In fact, the lack of titles flooding theaters has been seen by some distributors as incentive. For example, the Freestyle Releasing romantic-drama 2 Hearts remains headed for multiplexes October 16. “We know this is a challenging time for our friends in the exhibition community, and they need great movies now more than ever to offer their customers,” the film’s director Lance Hool says in an email to Vulture. “Because of the pandemic, 2 Hearts has a unique opportunity to play with very little competition as one of the few films in theaters this fall.”)
A Vulture source points out that even if Tenet winds up earning $200 million less at the box office as a result of sticking to its original no-PVOD plan, Warner Bros. will ultimately defray those costs in years to come by preserving its relationship with multibillion-dollar director Nolan (who, according to just about every insider account, agitated strenuously for his movie to come out only in theaters and as close to its original July drop date as possible) and the massive receipts that are likely to accompany his movies in years to come. But, overall, it can be agreed the British director’s palindromic thriller is gradually coming to be viewed as a theatrical launch failure — certainly not a flop in traditional terms, but no doubt a studio example of what not to do in pandemic circumstances with your biggest IP.
It’s unlikely to clear the [return-on-investment] bar. However, the world is in a pretty unique place so I don’t know if that was ever possible.
As for what counts as a successful pandemic premiere, it’s tough to count Mulan’s premium video-on-demand bow as a preferable alternative scheme. Earlier this month, Disney made the unheralded decision to skip theaters and release the $200 million live-action period epic straight to its proprietary OTT service for a $29.99 fee (but only in countries including the U.S. and New Zealand where Disney+ is fully functional). At a time when more than a third of American theaters were still off-limits and multiplex operations in major markets including New York and Los Angeles still have yet to restart as a result of curve-flattening ordinances, the studio reasoned that the excitement of releasing an event movie with a nine-figure budget online would trigger a spike in Disney+ subscriptions.
But on the heels of Mulan’s rollout on September 4, the studio refused to publicize data regarding the number of rentals or new subscriptions it brought in save for chief financial officer Christine McCarthy’s oblique remarks on an investor call: “We are very pleased with what we saw over the four-day weekend — I’ll leave it at that.”
According to industry estimates, Disney+ logged somewhere between 1 million and 1.3 million Mulan rentals over Labor Day weekend for a total gross of between $30 million and $40 million — not quite in the ballpark of what a global theatrical bow would have brought in but solid for an experimental release gambit. But, more tellingly, data from the streaming platform analytics firm Antenna reveal that two-thirds of those Mulan purchases came from users who began subscribing to Disney+ in 2019, and that Mulan’s opening-weekend sign-ups accounted for a mere 4 percent of the film’s rentals. By contrast, over the weekend the studio released its filmed version of the Broadway smash musical Hamilton on the OTT service. New subscriptions soared by 650 percent.
“Our data suggests that Mulan did not drive a meaningful number of new sign-ups for Disney+ — that’s a very important takeaway,” says Rameez Tase, Antenna’s co-founder and chief executive. “From a pure purchase standpoint, it did not break even on the cost of production, [and] it’s unlikely to clear the [return-on-investment] bar. However, the world is in a pretty unique place so I don’t know if that was ever possible.”
By Chris Lee@__ChrisLee
In the midst of a pandemic, nobody wants to use the F word. Yet Christopher Nolan’s movie is coming to be viewed as a theatrical misfire nonetheless. Photo: Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros.
Over the three brief weeks Christopher Nolan’s Tenet has been playing in U.S. theaters, the film’s financial performance has been the subject of nearly as much confusion as its “closed-loop” entropy plot. Rolled out Stateside around Labor Day, a week after debuting in dozens of foreign territories in an experimental reversal of the tried-and-true Hollywood blockbuster release formula, the espionage thriller took in $20.2 million over its first four days in North American theaters — a mere $9.4 million in the U.S. if you subtract Canadian grosses, it was later revealed.
Tenet’s distributor, Warner Bros., has remained confoundingly opaque about the film’s ticket-sales figures. The company initially refused to break down the numbers day by day and territory by territory (as is long-standing industry tradition), instead lumping in the Canadian haul with domestic numbers and infuriating box-office analysts and competing studios. Even under pandemic circumstances — in an era when movie theaters are governed by strict social-distancing rules that limit capacity and opening-weekend box-office tallies can no longer provide a reliable indication of a movie’s commercial viability — the prestige title long hailed by fans and theater chains as cinema’s great post-lockdown savior is facing an even more vexing set of questions: Is Tenet flopping? And if so, what does this mean for the industry? Particularly at a time when studios are kicking an increasing number of blockbusters down the release corridor, or testing the waters of premium video on demand à la Disney with Mulan.
“This is not how Warner Bros. expected it to go even in their worst-case scenario,” says Jeff Bock, senior box-office analyst for Exhibitor Relations. “They are not happy with these numbers. I’ve never seen a studio hide anything unless they’re disappointed. If you have something to crow about, they’ll let the world know.”
While Tenet’s worldwide ticket sales surpassed $251 million over the weekend, a black-and-white read of whether the studio gambled correctly by keeping the $200 million title on the 2020 release calendar remains difficult to quantify. With no significant competition from similarly scaled event films until November (when Marvel’s Black Widow and the 25th James Bond installment No Time to Die are slated for release), Warner Bros. has drilled down on the message that it’s “running a marathon, not a sprint,” monopolizing a majority of multiplex screens as hundreds of theaters across the country emerge from quarantine restrictions. Indeed, Tenet earned $4.7 million domestically over its third weekend, bringing the North American gross to $36.1 million — a not-disastrous outcome all things considered, but one inching rather than hurtling toward the movie’s conservatively estimated $400 million break-even point.
A box-office flop is typically defined as a highly anticipated studio film that is significantly unprofitable over the span of its theatrical run, but any movie whose combined revenue fails to exceed its production and marketing costs can be considered a bomb. According to industry insiders and analysts, however, there are two metrics of success more telling than simple dollar amounts in these highly unusual times: the film’s financial performance vis-à-vis a contemporaneous title like that of the X-Men spinoff The New Mutants (which premiered on August 28 in the U.S.) and Warner Bros.’ decision to maintain or reshuffle its release calendar in the immediate wake of Tenet’s American debut.
This isn’t a marathon. This is a grab-your-guns-and-get-out-of-town-as-quickly-as-possible scenario.
On September 9 — not even a full week after the Nolan sci-fi epic touched down in America — the studio pushed Wonder Woman 1984 from its October 2 release date, redating the sequel to director Patti Jenkins’s $821.8 million-grossing smash for a Christmastime drop. That would put WW84 in direct competition with another Warner Bros. title, the sci-fi epic Dune, which is currently scheduled for roll out December 18 (although nobody possessing even a remote familiarity with Hollywood’s inner workings expects it to stick with that date). According to a top executive at another studio, if Tenet were doing boffo box-office returns, Warner Bros. would have little incentive to alter the period-set superhero caper’s distribution plan — a viewpoint that Bock seconds. “They didn’t even wait until weekend two numbers to push Wonder Woman ‘84 back to December,” he says. “This isn’t a marathon. This is a ‘grab your guns and get out of town as quickly as possible’ scenario.”
For its part, New Mutants arrived in theaters as the latest superhero movie to be based on a Marvel comic-book property and one of first big films to open after widespread theater closures. Despite almost uniformly negative reviews — the New York Times described the film as “all build up and no bang,” the London Evening Standard called it “an unholy mess” — the PG-13 horror-hybrid took in $7 million in the U.S. over its opening weekend in what was regarded, with a kind of industrywide shrug, as a lackluster debut. To put that dollar amount in perspective, though, Tenet only earned $2.4 million more over the same period, never mind that the Nolan title debuted in 2,810 locations and New Mutants played in just 2,412.
Further eroding the narrative of Tenet as cinema’s great post-lockdown savior: The film’s domestic box-office returns dropped 66.8 percent — by more than two-thirds — in its second week after release, and another 29.9 percent in its third, raising significant questions about the kind of long-term “playability” Warner Bros. had been hoping for in the absence of competing blockbusters. Internationally, the film has continued to slide by double digits week by week, dropping by 35 percent in 54 overseas markets last weekend. Tenet could feasibly remain in theaters for longer than the traditional window (70 days) and continue to experience small returns until the end of the year, when a potential shift to HBO Max could be on the table. But, barring any hugely successful rerelease scheme, the pace at which the film performing doesn’t bode well for its future.
Tenet still stands in stark contrast to the slow-burn success of Fox’s The Greatest Showman, which — in non-pandemic times — initially tanked but stayed in theaters and sustained audiences for months after its 2017 release to earn $435.1 million globally. (Then again, Tenet is hoping to eventually do better than a movie like 2015’s Jupiter Ascending, classically accepted as a flop when you weigh its $184 million global returns against its approximately $200 million budget.) The obvious Tenet takeaway, according to the veteran entertainment operatives and studio executives who spoke to Vulture on condition of anonymity due to ongoing business sensitivities, may simply be that COVID-wary audiences are still overwhelmingly skittish about returning to theaters.
Even in more typical Hollywood conditions, singular movie hits and misses tend to send corrective ripples across the industry; this dynamic is only amplified in the shadow of pandemic uncertainty. Tenet’s soft box-office performance seems to have triggered a cascade of movie postponements across studios toward a time when many hope a COVID-19 vaccine will be readily available. On September 11, Universal pushed the Jordan Peele–produced supernatural horror flick Candyman from its October 16 date (the movie does not currently have a new release frame). Three days later, STX punted its end-of-days disaster thriller Greenland from September 25 to some point later this year. And since the middle of the month, rumors have swirled that Disney will likely shove Marvel Studios’ Black Widow from its November 6 rollout, and is reportedly exploring options to release the Pixar animated romp Soul, currently bound for theaters on November 20, via Disney+.
(Smaller 2020 titles seem less prone to delay. In fact, the lack of titles flooding theaters has been seen by some distributors as incentive. For example, the Freestyle Releasing romantic-drama 2 Hearts remains headed for multiplexes October 16. “We know this is a challenging time for our friends in the exhibition community, and they need great movies now more than ever to offer their customers,” the film’s director Lance Hool says in an email to Vulture. “Because of the pandemic, 2 Hearts has a unique opportunity to play with very little competition as one of the few films in theaters this fall.”)
A Vulture source points out that even if Tenet winds up earning $200 million less at the box office as a result of sticking to its original no-PVOD plan, Warner Bros. will ultimately defray those costs in years to come by preserving its relationship with multibillion-dollar director Nolan (who, according to just about every insider account, agitated strenuously for his movie to come out only in theaters and as close to its original July drop date as possible) and the massive receipts that are likely to accompany his movies in years to come. But, overall, it can be agreed the British director’s palindromic thriller is gradually coming to be viewed as a theatrical launch failure — certainly not a flop in traditional terms, but no doubt a studio example of what not to do in pandemic circumstances with your biggest IP.
It’s unlikely to clear the [return-on-investment] bar. However, the world is in a pretty unique place so I don’t know if that was ever possible.
As for what counts as a successful pandemic premiere, it’s tough to count Mulan’s premium video-on-demand bow as a preferable alternative scheme. Earlier this month, Disney made the unheralded decision to skip theaters and release the $200 million live-action period epic straight to its proprietary OTT service for a $29.99 fee (but only in countries including the U.S. and New Zealand where Disney+ is fully functional). At a time when more than a third of American theaters were still off-limits and multiplex operations in major markets including New York and Los Angeles still have yet to restart as a result of curve-flattening ordinances, the studio reasoned that the excitement of releasing an event movie with a nine-figure budget online would trigger a spike in Disney+ subscriptions.
But on the heels of Mulan’s rollout on September 4, the studio refused to publicize data regarding the number of rentals or new subscriptions it brought in save for chief financial officer Christine McCarthy’s oblique remarks on an investor call: “We are very pleased with what we saw over the four-day weekend — I’ll leave it at that.”
According to industry estimates, Disney+ logged somewhere between 1 million and 1.3 million Mulan rentals over Labor Day weekend for a total gross of between $30 million and $40 million — not quite in the ballpark of what a global theatrical bow would have brought in but solid for an experimental release gambit. But, more tellingly, data from the streaming platform analytics firm Antenna reveal that two-thirds of those Mulan purchases came from users who began subscribing to Disney+ in 2019, and that Mulan’s opening-weekend sign-ups accounted for a mere 4 percent of the film’s rentals. By contrast, over the weekend the studio released its filmed version of the Broadway smash musical Hamilton on the OTT service. New subscriptions soared by 650 percent.
“Our data suggests that Mulan did not drive a meaningful number of new sign-ups for Disney+ — that’s a very important takeaway,” says Rameez Tase, Antenna’s co-founder and chief executive. “From a pure purchase standpoint, it did not break even on the cost of production, [and] it’s unlikely to clear the [return-on-investment] bar. However, the world is in a pretty unique place so I don’t know if that was ever possible.”
Hey, You Guys Remember Tenet?
By Hunter Harris@hunteryharris
Everything’s fine! Seriously! Photo: Dominique Charriau/WireImage
Remember Tenet? Christopher Nolan’s newest time-travel movie, the one with John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, the one that was released in theaters in the middle of a global pandemic? Ah yes, that Tenet. Two months after its domestic release, Nolan has some personal news:
He’s “thrilled” at the blockbuster’s modest $350 million returns.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about The Nolan Variations, a new book of interviews and film criticism analyzing Nolan’s work, the director reflected on the movie’s release:
You hear that, movie studios? Tenet was big. Huge! Tenet wasn’t a flop, it didn’t underperform — it was actually a rebirth. Tenet’s beleaguered theatrical release and it’s healthy-but-not-excellent opening numbers in no way signal the death knell of the theatrical experience. [Don’t] sit back and relax. Soothe your weary souls with an answer to absolutely the most pressing question of our time: Tenet did fine.
By Hunter Harris@hunteryharris
Everything’s fine! Seriously! Photo: Dominique Charriau/WireImage
Remember Tenet? Christopher Nolan’s newest time-travel movie, the one with John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, the one that was released in theaters in the middle of a global pandemic? Ah yes, that Tenet. Two months after its domestic release, Nolan has some personal news:
He’s “thrilled” at the blockbuster’s modest $350 million returns.
Speaking to the Los Angeles Times about The Nolan Variations, a new book of interviews and film criticism analyzing Nolan’s work, the director reflected on the movie’s release:
“Warner Bros. released Tenet, and I’m thrilled that it has made almost $350 million,” he said. “But I am worried that the studios are drawing the wrong conclusions from our release — that rather than looking at where the film has worked well and how that can provide them with much needed revenue, they’re looking at where it hasn’t lived up to pre-COVID expectations and will start using that as an excuse to make exhibition take all the losses from the pandemic instead of getting in the game and adapting — or rebuilding our business, in other words.”
You hear that, movie studios? Tenet was big. Huge! Tenet wasn’t a flop, it didn’t underperform — it was actually a rebirth. Tenet’s beleaguered theatrical release and it’s healthy-but-not-excellent opening numbers in no way signal the death knell of the theatrical experience. [Don’t] sit back and relax. Soothe your weary souls with an answer to absolutely the most pressing question of our time: Tenet did fine.
Why Christopher Nolan gave in and helped a critic interpret his movies
Christopher Nolan and Tom Shone discuss "The Nolan Variations," Shone's new book on the famously elusive "Tenet" director's influences.
www.latimes.com
Why Christopher Nolan gave in and helped a critic interpret his movies
Film director Christopher Nolan, after author Tom Shone first met him in 2000 on the eve of the release of “Memento.”
(Barbara Alper/Getty Images)
By JOSH ROTTENBERG
NOV. 3, 2020
7 AM
ON THE SHELF
The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan
By Tom Shone
Knopf: 400 pages, $40
If you buy books linked on our site, The Times may earn a commission from Bookshop.org, whose fees support independent bookstores.
Whenever a new Christopher Nolan movie comes out, fans immediately start filling up the internet with armchair theorizing, whether unpacking the hidden political messages of “The Dark Knight” or decoding the dreams within dreams of “Inception.” But in writing his new retrospective book on Nolan’s career to date, Tom Shone had a special ace up his sleeve: Nolan himself.
In “The Nolan Variations,” released this week, British film critic Shone draws upon dozens of hours of interviews with the famously secretive director to explore the recurring themes and obsessions that run through Nolan’s work, from his little-seen 1998 feature debut, “Following,” through blockbusters like “Batman Begins” and “Dunkirk” and all the way up to his latest film, “Tenet,” which had its pandemic-straitened release in August.
Sifting for clues in Nolan’s upbringing and his creative influences, Shone attempts to explain how a director whose work is so dense with heady, sometimes challenging ideas ended up bending mainstream Hollywood — and at times our basic notions of reality — to his enigmatic vision.
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Shone is happy to report that he only partially succeeded. “My fear was if we sat in a room and talked about the films, I’d come to an understanding of them and then some of the magic would be gone,” Shone said last week in a joint interview with Nolan. “But I was discovering things right up to the end.”
The Times spoke with Shone and Nolan about how the book came together, the current perils facing the movie business and why we will never know what happened to that spinning top at the end of “Inception.”
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Tom, what was your impetus to write this book?
Shone: I felt that Chris was being ill served by the critical discourse around his films and that there was something that critics weren’t getting, in the same way they didn’t get Hitchcock. What I mean by that is not necessarily that they weren’t being nice enough to him; it wasn’t my intention to raise his Rotten Tomato meter by 10 points. It was more just about a sort of depth of engagement with the films.
It’s something I think the fans get. If you go exploring on the internet in the various fan forums theorizing about this or that aspect of his work, you get the sense that there’s this very rich, voluminous world to explore.
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Chris, you were initially resistant to getting involved. What changed your mind?
Nolan: It feels like forever Tom has been pushing me to cooperate with a book. I didn’t know what form it would take, and I genuinely felt I hadn’t done enough to warrant that, in a way. I don’t meant that as false modesty — it just felt like, without enough work under my belt, the book was just going to be about me and a couple of films.
I was always very resistant to the notion of biography as it applies to criticism. I’m of a mind with [pseudonymous German author] B. Traven, who once said that the only type of biography that should exist for a creator is their work. I think that’s the ideal scenario. Then, eventually, I sort of ran out of excuses because I’d done too many films, I suppose.
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Tom’s pitch seemed to be that I’m either the most underrated overrated director or the most overrated underrated director. There was this feeling that the culture doesn’t always quite know what to do with commercial success, with the knotty problem of the intersection of commerce and art, which is where Hollywood filmmaking really exists. And I sort of agreed with that. Hollywood filmmaking can reach so many different people in so many different places, and it has a particular language that I think is often denigrated and not talked about seriously.
Christopher Nolan, left, on the set of “Inception” with the cast and crew, shooting the hotel scene.
(Alamy Stock Photo)
Tom, the book is not a biography, but you do draw some connections between themes that run through Nolan’s movies — things like time, memory and mazes — and aspects of his life, whether it’s his transatlantic upbringing or his experience in boarding school. Were you looking for a sort of Rosebud in his past that would unlock all the mysteries?
Nolan: [laughs] He was looking.
Shone: I wanted to persuade Chris that there’s an element of personal expression in this work. I could feel it. I just knew from watching these films that they came from deep within him. So it was a little bit like fumbling around in the dark.
Whatever roadblocks Chris put up to block a line of inquiry, I remain convinced that he manages to pull off this extraordinary double-jointed trick, which is to make mainstream entertainment while smuggling in all sorts of more personal elements. I think of Chris as sort of a smuggler par excellence. I don’t know if he would agree with that.
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Nolan: Well, it’s an interesting question. Tom would quite often present me with connections between things he’d learned about in my life and the films, and I would sort of bat them back and say, “Yes, but it’s not important.” And I think what’s interesting about the book is that that dialogue forms a big part of it.
Christopher Nolan and Emma Thomas on holiday in California. The photo inspired a key scene in “Inception” a year later.
(Roko Belic)
Were there any connections Tom made that surprised you?
Nolan: It all surprised me, because I’ve never looked at any of it in that way. I spent a lot of times shooting down what I felt were the more fanciful connections. But at the end of the day, there were some valid connections there that did make me sort of step back.
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What’s an example, if you don’t mind pointing one out?
Nolan: I very much mind pointing one out. I don’t want to give Tom the satisfaction. [laughs]
Christopher Nolan, right, and Kenneth Branagh on the set of “Dunkirk.”
(Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros.)
Chris, as a rule, you don’t like telling people how they should interpret your movies. Was there a concern that by participating in a book like this it could seem like you’re presenting an official, Nolan-sanctioned interpretation?
Nolan: It was definitely a concern, but I don’t feel it’s come out that way. I often tell the story about when we went to the Venice Film Festival with “Memento.” We had a press conference afterwards and somebody asked me what the objective truth about the ending is. I said, “Well, that’s for the audience to decide. But what I think is —” and then I gave my answer. My brother Jonah took me aside afterward and said, “Nobody listened to the first half of that answer. They just want to know what the guy who made the film thinks. You can never do that again.” He was absolutely right, and I’ve never done it since.
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Shone: That “Memento” discussion told me that wasn’t going to be where the book was going to go. I wasn’t going to be hounding Chris for an answer to what was happening at the end of “Inception.” And I’m quite happy with that. I’m as fond of ambiguity and paradox as Chris is. I wanted to write a book that helped me understand his work, but I absolutely did not want to dispel the mystique that attends it.
One of the sketches writer-director Christopher Nolan did for the plane crash scene in “Tenet,” from the book “The Nolan Variations: The Movies, Mysteries, and Marvels of Christopher Nolan” by Tom Shone.
(Christopher Nolan)
Chris, in the chapter on “Tenet,” you acknowledge that the film repeats a few ideas from movies like “Inception,” and you talk about the dangers of becoming too self-aware about your obsessions. Isn’t that also a danger of collaborating with Tom?
Nolan: Self-consciousness is death to a filmmaker. It’s not about not repeating yourself. It’s about not not repeating yourself. It’s about doing what’s best for the story you need to tell and for giving the audience the best experience without considering it as part of a body of work. But the great thing about the way that this project came together is that Tom never made it about considering a body of work. It was just fun. It wasn’t a very self-conscious process; it was a much broader, more colorful conversation than that.
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It is, though, an argument for taking movies seriously. And it’s out in a moment when the film business is facing existential challenges because of COVID-19. How do you see the outlook for movies?
Shone: I remember Chris and I had a conversation about the future of cinema a year or so ago, and at the time, I felt that it was an abstract concept. I’d never taken seriously the idea that the movies would ever end. Now, of course, we’re in a very different world and we’re finding out the future of movies on a week-by-week basis. Are there going to be movie theaters in a few weeks? It feels like whatever was happening to the movie business is now happening at double the speed. But I’d be curious to know what Chris’ take is.
Director Christopher Nolan and John David Washington confer while shooting the opening scene of “Tenet.”
(Melinda Sue Gordon/Warner Bros.)
Nolan: Well, it’s a difficult question to speak to. If you’re talking about the acceleration of existing trends, that’s something I started reading right at the beginning of the pandemic. And it ignores the reality that 2019 was the biggest year for theatrical films in history. They’d made the most money. The admissions were huge. So to me, it’s much more about: What’s the new reality we’re living in?
Warner Bros. released “Tenet,” and I’m thrilled that it has made almost $350 million. But I am worried that the studios are drawing the wrong conclusions from our release — that rather than looking at where the film has worked well and how that can provide them with much needed revenue, they’re looking at where it hasn’t lived up to pre-COVID expectations and will start using that as an excuse to make exhibition take all the losses from the pandemic instead of getting in the game and adapting — or rebuilding our business, in other words.
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Long term, moviegoing is a part of life, like restaurants and everything else. But right now, everybody has to adapt to a new reality.
This interview has been condensed and edited.
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