And so comes the hammer blow. After two release date changes, Warner Bros. has decided to take Christopher Nolan's Tenet off the schedule entirely for now, blowing the chances for cinema chains – in the US, at least – to have it as their big return to business.
"We will share a new 2020 release date imminently for Tenet, Christopher Nolan’s wholly original and mind-blowing feature," said Warner Bros. chairman Toby Emmerich in a statement. "We are not treating Tenet like a traditional global day-and-date release, and our upcoming marketing and distribution plans will reflect that." What exactly that means remains to be seen, though it could point to the film arriving in the UK, Europe and Asia before the US, which is still seeing huge numbers of Covid cases and has been seemingly unable to stop the trend upwards.
Director Christopher Nolan had hoped that the film would still be the event to usher cinemagoers back to screens, which led to the minor date changes. Now, though, the ramifications of the big change mean other companies such as Disney will re-evaluate their own plans. Other Warners titles, including Wonder Woman 1984 and Dune remain set for 2020, but let's see what happens with them. The third Conjuring film, which was impacted by a production shutdown, is moving from its September date to 4 June next year, because it's simply not ready for release.