Warner Bros. was very adamant to release Tenet. The WB execs were hoping that their big-budget film could actually bring people back to the theatres. But that didn’t happen on the scale that they had thought of. So far, Tenet’s international returns have been keeping the hopes of Warner Bros. alive, but the movie hasn’t done what it was expected to do on the domestic front. Christopher Nolan & Warner Bros. would be really disappointed that a film like Tenet, which was supposed to be seen by a large majority of people hasn’t really got any attention in the US markets.
The good thing for Warners is that Tenet has finally crossed the $300 Million mark. It stands on a total of $307 million right now, but what’s bad is that the movie has only brought in $45 million from the domestic market. It had a production budget of $200 million. An analyst reported that the movie will need to make around $800 million to just break even. It would have done that if these were normal times, but the Box Office hasn’t reflected the returns because theatres aren’t working at full capacity and people aren’t really willing to go back to the movies just yet.
So, Tenet will be looking at a massive loss if it doesn’t make its money back in the next 2 months or so. The only advantage that this movie has is that it isn’t going to face any big competition until December. But still, Warner Bros. has to admit that they overestimated people’s need to watch their big-budget film. Or maybe they got a bit greedy. They should have been patient like Disney, Sony, Paramount, Universal & Lionsgate have been. But, the one thing that the release of Tenet has done is that it has alerted other studios while keeping the theatres afloat. Warner Bros. learned a lesson the hard way, but at least this could work out well for Wonder Woman 1984 and Dune. Disney & MGM have also benefitted. Upon looking at Tenet’s performance, they delayed Black Widow and No Time to Die to 2021.
Let’s hope that Tenet does make its money back because it deserves to. But it has really found itself in a tough situation.
