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With the foreign box office showing some signs of life in the pandemic, Warner Bros. will open Christopher Nolan’s long-awaited Tenet in over 70 countries worldwide starting on Wednesday, Aug. 26. The plan includes Tenet opening in Canada on Thursday Aug. 27 before the U.S. release which will be in select cities on Thursday, Sept. 3.
Exactly where stateside? In those cities where it’s seen that it’s safe to reopen. We already know that AMC has announced a mid-to-late August reopening. Regal and Cinemark have yet to detail their reopening plans again. With capped capacities and a select city rollout, Warners is hoping for a long tail on Tenet.
China is still awaiting a release date, though it’s in the cards to be released. Warner Bros. is releasing Nolan’s Interstellar there on Aug. 2, an indication that the country’s two-hour limit for a single movie restriction will be relaxed, paving the way for Tenet which is listed as being 2 1/2 hours.
Having Nolan’s 10th anniversary re-release of Inception is also in the works with a stateside debut of Aug. 21 in select cities. Inception will begin its offshore rollout on Aug. 12.
The first major swath of openings on Aug. 26 will include Belgium, Bulgaria, Croatia, Denmark, Egypt, Estonia, Finland, France, Holland, Hungary, Iceland, Indonesia, Italy, Korea, Latvia, Lithuania, Portugal, Serbia, Slovakia, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Ukraine, and the UK, followed by Australia, Austria, Bahrain, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, Greece, Hong Kong, Israel, Lebanon, Malaysia, Middle East, New Zealand, Poland, Saudi Arabia, Singapore, Taiwan, Thailand, United Arab Emirates on Thursday Aug. 27. Then on Friday, Aug. 28 East Africa, Ghana, Nigeria, Norway, Romania, Slovenia, Spain and Vietnam will go. Kuwait and Qatar are planning Sept. 3; Azerbaijan, CIS Others, Kazakhstan, Russia on Sept. 10 with Japan on Sept. 18.
Those markets, in addition to China, which are awaiting a release include most of Latin America where the peak of COVID-19 hasn’t been reached, Brazil already counting over 2 million cases according to the BBC. Hence that country, along with Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, India, Mexico, Nicaragua, Panama, Peru, Philippines, Puerto Rico, South Africa, Uruguay and Venezuela will have to wait for Tenet.
Stateside this past weekend, drive-ins continued to propel whatever force there is at the box office with IFC’s Dave Franco-directed horror movie The Rental ranking no. 1 with over $421K at 251 locations (the movie was also available for release on PVOD). This marked the second time since Universal/DreamWorks Animation’s Trolls World Tour that a new theatrical release topped the box office during the pandemic instead of a catalog one.
Overseas was more robust: Korea’s Train To Busan sequel, Peninsula, crossed $20M in its second weekend there. China clocked $13M from all titles as cinemas reopened with Uni’s Dolittle seeing $5.2M from about 3,000 screens. Sony/Bona’s Bloodshot cleared $2.8M. Those numbers aren’t typical of the Middle Kingdom where currently 40% of all movie theaters are open with 30% capacity restrictions.
We’ll see what clicks into place again following Tenet‘s dating stateside, but here’s what the late August into the early fall theatrical release calendar is looking like according to Comscore. We’re still waiting to see where Disney’s Mulan goes as well as Sony/TriStar’s Broken Hearts Gallery.
August 21
Unhinged (Solstice Studios)
Inception rerelease (Warner Bros.)
August 28
The New Mutants (20th/Disney)
Fatima (Picturehouse) – theatrical and PVOD
The Personal History of David Copperfield (Searchlight/Disney) — limited
Sept. 1
Bill & Ted Face the Music (Orion/UAR) (select theaters and PVOD)
Sept. 3
Tenet (Warner Bros.)
Sept. 18
The King’s Man (20th/Disney)
Kajillionaire (Focus) – limited
Sept. 25
Greenland (STX)
Oct. 2
Wonder Woman 1984 (Warner Bros)
Nancy Tartaglione contributed to this story