Tenet hit its estimated budget as the film has surpassed $200 million at the global box office. Despite the milestone, there is still work that needs to be done to reach true profitability and that seems to be in question after its second-weekend tumble.
Tenet grossed an estimated $6.7 million during its second weekend which represents a 66.8% drop from its decent opening weekend of $20.2 million. This is a bit troubling because about 100 more exhibitor locations reopened over the weekend and Tenet still saw a sizable slide. The fact of the matter is, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York still have their indoor theaters shuttered and even a film like Tenet is suffering because of it. There was a lot of hope riding on Tenet’s success as other studios were looking to see how it performed as they gaged release strategies for their tentpole releases. Wonder Woman 1984 recently shifted to a Christmas release after it was already moved off of June to October. Warner Bros., the studio that also released Tenet, likely saw the money they were leaving on the table by not having those markets open and decided it was best to shift the release date. Candyman also shifted off its October release to a still to be determined date in 2021 and I bet it was largely because studios are seeing that if the box office isn’t close to being 100% due to certain areas not opening theaters and, if they are, seating at a limited capacity, it just isn’t worth the risk to lose out on the money could make if they delay the film and wait for a better time to release it.
There was some promising news for the film during its second weekend. Los Angeles, which remains largely closed, was the top market for Tenet, with the Nolan time-travel noir seeing a big bounce from Orange County’s reopening, and the top two locations for the film being the AMC OC, the Regal at the Irvine Spectrum, and the fourth-highest location being the Paramount Drive-in Los Angeles. Imagine if Los Angeles theaters were fully reopened? Tenet would likely see a nice boost from having that market in play and since Warner Bros. plans to run Tenet in theaters for a long time, it will be interesting to see the bump the film could get from Los Angeles, San Francisco, and New York being in play.
Overseas, Tenet did $30.6 million over the weekend and now has a running tally of $177.5 million for a worldwide total of $207 million. In IMAX, Tenet took $4.2M from 1033 screens. Overseas added another $3.5 million from 743 IMAX screens. Of those, Hong Kong contributed $200,000 from only five screens. Strong holds were seen across numerous markets, including Russia (-8), Saudi Arabia (-12%), Finland (-5%), Sweden (-5%), Germany (-29%), Italy (-29%), Taiwan (-35%) Korea (-23%), Denmark (-16%), and Singapore (-1%).The international IMAX total now stands at $19.2 million which is 11% of the total international gross.
