Sony won’t make “mistake” of releasing a big movie like Tenet during pandemic

Tenet is now out in theaters, and it’s done…okay, for a movie released during a pandemic. Sony, however, is not impressed.

Christopher Nolan’s spy thriller Tenet was one of the first big movies to open since movie theaters shut down following the coronavirus pandemic. Hollywood was looking to it to see if people were interested in going to the movies, and the results have been…meh. Per Variety, the movie generated $20.2 million in the US over Labor Day weekend, and is approaching $150 worldwide. That’s not bad when we’re in the midst of a pandemic, but considering that the movie cost $225 million to produce (before marketing), Warner Bros. was probably hoping for more.

Variety notes that the U.S. opening was hindered by a lack of open movie theaters, with only 2,800 cinemas open for business; that accounts for around 65% of all the cinemas in the country. Many theaters in big markets like New York City, Los Angeles, Seattle and San Francisco are still closed. Also, even if they had the option, fears of spreading the virus would have put off many moviegoers off going. And if you do go, theaters are operating at limited capacity.

Sony Pictures Entertainment Chairman Tony Vinciquerra looks at this and takes a lesson from it. “What we won’t do is make the mistake of putting a very, very expensive $200 million movie out in the market unless we’re sure that theaters are open and operating at significant capacity,” he told The Wrap.

"You’ll see a lot of strange things happen over the next six months in how films are released, how they’re scheduled, how they’re marketed, but once we get back to normal, we will have learned a lot I think and found ways to do things that are somewhat different and hopefully better."

True to its word, Sony has already started to push back the release dates of some of its major movies. Both Venom 2: Let There Be Carnage and Morbius have both been delayed to 2021. Sony still one big release scheduled for this year: the animated comedy Connected, which is due out October 23. I’m interested to see how the other big movies this year fare, especially Denis Villeneuve’s adaptation of Dune, which is one of the most anticipated sci-fi movies we’ve had for a while.

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