80% of the U.S. Population Will Be Able to See ‘Tenet' on Labor Day (Sorry, New York and California)

As I stated earlier this week, the European and Canadian August 26th release date for Christopher Nolan’s “Tenet” is happening. You can shout out your window, post negative virus-shaming messages online, but nothing is going to stop this train from being unveiled, ditto its September 2nd U.S. release date. Whether the Los Angeles and New York markets reopen is not important anymore to the WB and Nolan, they want to start a domino effect for the industry with this landmark rollout of “Tenet.” Godspeed.

As of right now, “Tenet” will be released in select cities on September 2, but Warner Bros. must surely know that the movie won’t be playing everywhere on that day. “Tenet” may not open in L.A. and New York first, but a new report from IndieWire suggests that Nolan’s latest may not even need those two big markets after all. According to the data assembled by IW’s ingenious resident box-office guru, Tom Brueggemann, only Arizona, California, New Jersey, and New York face the possibility of movie theaters not being open by Labor Day weekend. However, Arizona does have a reopening set for August 9.

Regardless, the film has now been approved for Chinese release as well. There will, of course, still be those that refuse to go to a movie theater until there is a vaccine, but I’m betting this release will pay off greatly for the WB and Nolan as they have the fanbase to make big money out of this, maybe not the kind of dough they would have made during a normal year, but, nevertheless, there will be profits to be made here since there are plenty of people hungry to go back to theaters.

As I posted a few days ago:

An anonymous source close to the WB emailed me back saying “There is no doubt in my mind that you will be seeing “Tenet” before fall hits. As you can imagine, we are very frustrated by the constant delays that have happened but are now in full-blown release mode for the film. The support and backing we have gotten from European chains these last few weeks has been overwhelming, they are ready to watch this movie and so is the rest of the world. As far as we’re concerned, there’s no going back and Chris (Nolan) is very excited to finally unveil his latest masterpiece.”