Christopher Nolan directorial efforts no longer even need to be brand-new movies to rack up impressive box office grosses. In December 2024, Paramount Pictures and Warner Bros. brought Interstellar back to IMAX locations for its tenth anniversary. Despite never playing in more than 321 theaters across this 14-day reissue, Interstellar made another $15.2 million in North America plus an additional $22.99 million internationally. It was an incredibly lucrative run demonstrating how people will happily show up to see certain beloved movies on the big screen even if they can watch them on streaming.
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There’s no doubt that other studios owning Nolan movies eyeballed Interstellar’s reissue box office grosses and considered how they could get in on the action. However, if there’s any Nolan feature that deserves a theatrical re-release, it’s his one big blockbuster that’s never received a proper American theatrical run.
The Sad Saga of Tenet’s 2020 Theatrical Release
Given that Top Gun: Maverick and Minions: The Rise of Gru became massive box office hits after postponing their 2020 theatrical releases for two years, it’s extra sad in hindsight to see how Warner Bros. and company kept trying to launch Christopher Nolan’s Tenet in the final weeks of summer 2020. Once set for a July 17, 2020 debut, this title kept getting endless one-week delays (in the hopes of New York and Los Angeles movie theaters getting to reopen) before the studio finally launched it in Canada on August 27th and the United States on September 3rd.
The result of this release strategy was that, though Tenet technically played in as many as 2,930 theaters in its initial domestic theatrical run, it was missing out on the two biggest cities in the country: Los Angeles and New York City. Thus, Tenet’s grosses were severely limited in North America and its theatrical run never felt “proper.” Even when it got a minor theatrical re-release in early March 2021 in select New York multiplexes, it didn’t feel the same. COVID-19’s ongoing horrors ensured that Tenet couldn’t have a normal, proper American theatrical run.
In the years since, Warner Bros. has surprisingly not tried relaunching Tenet as a theatrical event now that all domestic theaters are reopened. There was a brief one-week 70mm IMAX reissue in early 2024, but that’s nowhere near giving Tenet the proper 3,000+ domestic theater run it never got back in 2020. Perhaps Warner Bros. no longer having an ongoing relationship with Nolan has soured the studio on giving Tenet another chance. However, giving this time-oriented Nolan directorial effort a splashy theatrical run (even if it’s just for two weeks like Interstellar’s December 2014 run) could easily become a license to print money.
Tenet Has Real Value as a Big-Screen Experience
The trailers for the 1997 reissues of the original Star Wars trilogy began by reminding audiences that “if you’ve seen [these films] only on your television…then you haven’t seen them at all.” A similar principle applies to Tenet. Bringing back an explosion-laden action blockbuster chock-full of fistfights and grand spectacle to the big screen is a no-brainer. This is the kind of motion picture that hits radically differently in a darkened auditorium versus watching passively on your phone. Plus, Tenet’s the kind of 150-minute feature people often feel daunted to watch on streaming.
In a theatrical space, where watching things is an event (and there aren’t reruns of your favorite sitcom simultaneously available at the push of a button), Tenet’s grand scope is a virtue. Plus, Tenet’s September 2020 release ensured that, even if one’s local multiplex was open, chances are many people simply couldn’t see it theatrically. Now they’ll get a chance to witness Tenet the way Nolan intended in a general theatrical release that, for the first time ever, includes audiences across all of North America.
On top of all that, Nolan’s name has never been hotter now that he’s the director of Best Picture Oscar-winner Oppenheimer. Tenet might’ve been a tough sell even in a standard non-COVID environment, but in a post-Oppenheimer world, people are infinitely more willing to take a risk on the project. There are endless benefits to finally giving Tenet the proper American theatrical run that eluded it in its clumsy, misguided 2020 domestic release. Interstellar paved an enticing road in late 2024 that Warner Bros. must allow Tenet to travel down.
Tenet is now available for digital rental or purchase from Apple TV and Google Play.
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Image courtesy of Warner
