‘Tenet’ in Theaters for Warner Bros.

With movie theaters having opened recently in cities across the country, the entertainment industry waited to see how well “Tenet,” the new Christopher Nolan film would do on its opening weekend. The film distributed by Warner Bros. Studios in Burbank was not the first to come out during the coronavirus outbreak but it certainly was the highest profile. Originally scheduled to hit theaters in July, the spy thriller was pushed forward twice until settling on Sept. 3 for its North American release date. It had been in foreign theaters a week before. Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst in the Sherman Oaks office of ComScore Inc., a media measurement and analytics company, said in an interview with the Business Journal that Warner Bros. put a lot on the line to get the film out to audiences. The company could have easily gone in a different direction, like straight to a streaming site like HBO Max, but that was never going to happen. At $20.2 million, the distributor didn’t have the kind of domestic opening weekend that would have happened in normal times, Dergarabedian said. “But to them, I think the currency of goodwill with the filmmaker and the consumers was much more important than the currency of dollars and cents, as Pollyannaish as that sounds coming from anyone,” he added. The total global take for “Tenet” is about $150 million. Dergarabedian called it a “circuitous and bumpy” road to get films like “Tenet” into theaters. Before Nolan’s film, there were others including “Unhinged” with Russell Crowe, “The New Mutants” from Disney-owned 20th Century Studios Inc. and “Bill and Ted Face the Music” that had already been released into theaters. “Down the road when these films are still in first run, they may get a bump in box office but again it is so dependent on circumstances that are beyond the control of the movie theater or the consumer – and that is the pandemic and how that can impact theater closures and openings,” Dergarabedian said. “We have never seen that specific dynamic before.” Dergarabedian foresees a shift in how studios determine the success of a film. They will no longer fixate on the traditional opening weekend, he said. “It is about the opening 30 days and beyond, depending on what cities open over time,” he explained. The immediate impacts of the virus on the entertainment industry can be seen in how production was halted for three months, he added. “Movie making and movie going are by their nature communal experiences, and on the movie making side, collaborative with a lot of people,” Dergarabedian said. “It is going to take the creativity of those who make movies and TV shows and every other kind of filmed content to find workarounds during this pandemic. I think they are doing it, but it has no doubt had an impact.”