Tenet ⭐️⭐️⭐️½
Tenet apparently didn’t do the $20 million that was reported. It’s half that, which could threaten another delay for Wonder Woman 1984 release in October. Dune, which has a pretty cool looking trailer, is also at risk.
Warners did not break down the $20.2 million total by days, or by country. However, according to multiple sources, Canada’s initial Wednesday-Sunday grossed $2.6 million. Based on normal play, Labor Day likely brought in about $2.5 million. In the U.S., there were limited shows August 30-September 2, followed by a full day on Thursday, September 3; a fair guess for that period is $5 million. That comes to around $10 million, leaving “Tenet” about about the same for its actual opening three day weekend in North America.
Mediocre ‘Tenet’ Grosses Likely Factor in Expected ‘Wonder Woman 1984’ and ‘Dune’ Delays – IndieWire
Still, $10 million in box office sales for Tenet considering the number of theaters that haven’t reopened and the number of moviegoers that haven’t gone back yet isn’t “mediocre” as the article states. Also, don’t forget the $100+ million in international revenue.
Assuming those numbers aren’t faked.
One reason I’m not a political blogger — and likely couldn’t be, frankly — is pure disgust at the phony environment. Here we are a couple short months from a presidential election and who seriously knows what to trust from the media regarding both presidential candidates. Everything seems overblown and with exclamation !!!! marks !!!! At some point, you become breathless reading about so many different panic modes. Voters can analyze President Trump’s impulsive, sanity-stretched rule over the last four years and Biden’s 40+ year political record (and the fact he looks at death’s door), but it’s difficult to gauge the unbiased truth from the media about either candidate. Can you?
And, more relevant to this site, we’re in the midst of an event we’ve not experienced before in my lifetime and not even the entertainment sector is safe from spin.
Spin, spin, spin.
Making box-office gross available is a norm, but it’s not a requirement. Studios made the collective judgment decades ago that the reports provide more positive energy for successful films than harm for the bad ones, but the horse-race aspects often create the impression that the immediate response determines a film’s value. For “Tenet,” Warners decided to buck tradition and withhold information, thereby avoiding much of the rush to judgment. It also allows the studio greater capacity to spin.
Tenet and Mulan Opening Weekend: Studios Say Don’t Judge Box Office | IndieWire
This seems like we were being setup to accept falsehoods involving the actual box office states. Unbelievable – and yet in 2020 nothing seems to be.
We don’t know what the streaming viewing numbers are, because Netflix doesn’t use third party analytics and the closest they’ll come to telling us is their top 10 list. This list, they say — and we are supposed to believe them — is the popularity of movie and TV shows on their service. Hulu claimed an Andy Samberg movie was one of their top movies (see: 15+ Palm Springs Reviews – Samberg Still Isn’t Funny), but was it? Where is the independent verification?
Too much of what we see and read in 2020 is spin and it’s disappointing. We don’t have independent, third party verification much any more. Instead, we have some popular website or organization saying they have “inside sources” and that makes news. We have the companies themselves reporting popularity of shows they paid to create. We are, literally, trusting what we’re being told, not what really is happening.
I don’t mean to be the cynic here, but the amount of news I’m reading that I believe is 100% accurate is very, very small.
All this to say, we don’t know exactly what the true Tenet numbers are in the United States. Warner Bros. provided part of the story. We don’t know what Mulan’s numbers behind the premium gated VOD wall of Disney+ either, but we’re hearing it’s doing very well. We’ll just have to take Disney’s word for that.
Oceanfront property is raging in Arizona right now.
Movies, Movies, Movies 
Good piece. I’d say Tenet is opening with a franction of what might have been expected, but comparisons are out the window. Still averaging 1k deaths a day in the US compared to single figures in many European countries, and I wouldn’t go out my front door if I was over there. Looks like Tenet will top out at $300+ wordlwide, probably less that half of the original expectation. But we simply don’t know that the recoup deal was in terms of weekly percetage share between cinema and studio, so any reflections on profit are null and void. I’d say Tenet has pulled good numbers given the circumstances, and given that the next big film is the elderly-skewing Death on the Nile, it’s the only show in town for a bit…
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