While it’s certainly not enjoying the kind of numbers it would have if 2020 were any normal year, Christopher Nolan’s time-bending sci-fi thriller Tenet has taken its worldwide haul to just shy of $150 million two weekends into its international roll out.
The film, which stars John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, opened to $20.2 million in the United States, which is around $30 million down on Nolan’s average opening weekend but almost three times the $7 million debut of The New Mutants, which had been the biggest opening since the coronavirus pandemic began.
In addition to the U.S., Tenet also debuted in China with a $30 million opening (although it had to settle for second place in the chart behind Chinese smash hit The Eight Hundred). That pushed its international total to $126 million, for a worldwide total of $146.2 million to date.
With little in the way of competition in multiplexes over the coming weeks, one would assume that Tenet will enjoy some healthy legs. However, with the film reportedly needing anywhere between $500 million and $800 million to break even, there’s still a long way to go before this one can be considered a hit.
Armed with only one word – Tenet – and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real-time. Not time travel. Inversion.
Tenet sees Christopher Nolan directing a cast that includes John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Dimple Kapadia, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh.
