The ongoing saga of the release date for Christopher Nolan’s Tenet is beginning to look as complex as the plot of one of his films, with twists and turns to match. Last week, Warner Bros. announced that the film’s planned mid-August release date was no longer in the cards, and that an announcement about a new plan was forthcoming. Industry observers hotly debated what might come next: could the film be pushed back into 2021? Could Nolan be persuaded to support a simultaneous theatrical and digital release of the film? Could Tenet become an HBO Max exclusive?
In the end, none of those options came to pass. (Though it’s worth saying that nearly every sentence in here has an implicit “for now” at the end of it, given the number of alterations made to the film’s release schedule so far.) According to a report by Zack Sharf at IndieWire, Tenet will open in 70 countries in late August, followed by a limited U.S. release in early September.
The studio’s statement on the release date, issued on Monday, offers more specifics:
Today, Warner Bros. announced that ‘Tenet’ will open in over 70 countries worldwide starting on August 26. Major territories will include Australia, Canada, France, Germany, Italy, Japan, Korea, Russia, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The film will open in the United States over Labor Day weekend in select cities.
As IndieWire’s report points out, it’s unclear whether or not movie theaters will be open in New York or Los Angeles by that time — or how the studio plans to deal with a situation where numerous viewers who’d like to see the film theatrically won’t be able to do so. It’s a bold choice by Warner Bros. We’ll know in a month whether it’s the one that took.
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