Doctor Strange Director Tells Fans Not to Go See Tenet or Any Other Movie in Theaters

Scott Derrickson doesn’t want you to see Tenet — or any other movies, for that matter — at the cinema. Friday night, the helmer behind Doctor Strange posted an ominous warning to his Twitter account, asking his followers not to attend movie theaters until the coronavirus pandemic has passed. A concern for many, Derrickson seemed to express displeasure in those Americans continuing to push for the reopening for theaters far in advance of the pandemic actually being handled by health and government officials.

“Don’t go see Tenet or any other movie in theater. There, I said it,” Derrickson tweeted. In a follow-up tweet, the filmmaker added that he was “speaking to my fellow Americans of course.”

If you’ve been keeping track, Tenet’s likely the first major release many theaters will show in a summer blockbuster deeply affected by coronavirus-adjacent delays and shutdowns.

At one point, Derrickson was also attached to Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness, even introducing the feature at last year’s San Diego Comic-Con alongside Marvel Studios head Kevin Feige. Earlier this year, however, Derrickson parted ways from Marvel Studios due to creative differences.

“Marvel and I have mutually agreed to part ways on Doctor Strange: In the Multiverse of Madness due to creative differences,” Derrickson tweeted in January. “I am thankful for our collaboration and will remain on as EP.”

Derrickson’s departure led some to speculate the director — who has in roots in horror, mind you — wanted to make a much more scary film than what Marvel wanted to do.

“Multiverse of Madness is the greatest title we’ve ever come up with, by the way, which is one thing that’s exciting about it,” Feige said about the scariness last year. “I wouldn’t necessarily say that’s a horror film, but … it’ll be a big MCU film with scary sequences in it.”

“I mean, there are horrifying sequences in Raiders that I as a little kid would [cover my eyes] when their faces melted. Or Temple of Doom, of course, or Gremlins, or Poltergeist,” Feige said. “These are the movies that invented the PG-13 rating, by the way. They were PG and then they were like, ‘We need another [rating].’ But that’s fun. It’s fun to be scared in that way, and not a horrific, torturous way, but a way that is legitimately scary — because Scott Derrickson is quite good at that — but scary in the service of an exhilarating emotion.”

Tenet is due out September 3rd.

Cover photo by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images for Disney