Well, someone had to go first. And “Tenet”, the first major motion picture to open in American theaters during the Coronavirus pandemic, opened to $20.2 million dollars (story HERE).
While the film is still performing well enough overseas and there are caps in domestic theaters on crowd capacity and limited market availability, America may not be ready to return to theaters just yet.
This was supposed to be one of the biggest films of the year. While it will be in theaters for a good measure of time to come, other organizations might be a little apprehensive before releasing movies in this climate.
That’s exactly what I was worried about.
The next big movie to hit theaters will be Wonder Woman 1984 on October 2nd.
I can tell you, $20 million won’t cut it for the DC Universe. Same goes for Marvel, who is still holding back “Black Widow”.
Now let me remind you, this isn’t to say “Tenet” is a bad film. I haven’t seen it. It’s doing 74% on Rotten Tomatoes right now. That’s not too shabby.
But other filmmakers might decide that’s a conversation they don’t want to have with the industry right now.
While this was a result I feared, it wasn’t the worst possibility. That could still occur.
That would be companies acting like Disney and their release of “Mulan”, deciding they want to double bill already existing subscribers on new films. That is indeed wrong (story HERE).
Unfortunately, people don’t feel safe yet. While we shouldn’t call this a defeat for Tenet. It is a warning sign for other movies to come.