Hollywood, which spent the last two weeks easing back with a throwaway Russell Crowe vehicle and a long-shelved horror movie, finally threw out a big gun for Labor Day with the belated revival of Christopher Nolan's Tenet. The film, which in the before times was expected to be one of the summer's biggest blockbusters and spent weeks as the last movie standing on its original release date as every other movie scheduled between mid-March and October either fled to later in the calendar or threw in the towel and went straight to streaming, had previously opened overseas, to decent, if hardly revolutionary, reviews and strong business. The question would be if it could replicate some of that foreign success in a country where hundreds of theaters, including every one in several major cities, were still closed and the ones that were open would be only able to sell a limited supply of tickets to each show. And the results were...OK? Maybe?
Over the long holiday weekend, Tenet took in $20.2 million. Is that good? While the film certainly didn't exceed expectations (the most optimistic of which were suggesting a gross of over $30 million), it didn't come in below expectations, either. What people would love to do is compare the grosses here to how much Disney took in from Mulan, which was going for $30 on Disney+. However, Disney hasn't released those numbers yet, but if their upcoming titles Black Widow and Soul, both of which are scheduled for theatrical release in November, are yanked off the release calendar and made Disney+ premium titles themselves, we'll have a pretty good idea of how well Mulan did.
Getting back to Tenet, the good news is that, unlike most blockbusters, the opening weekend shouldn't be the whole story. Right now, only three more films are scheduled to open wide in theaters this month, and only one of them is from a major studio. That should mean that, for most potential moviegoers, Tenet will likely be the most attractive option until Wonder Woman 1984 opens in early October. If the film is able to score weekly grosses in the teens each upcoming weekend until then, that will probably relieve some of the anxiety that studios have about whether people will return to theaters.
Last week's champion, The New Mutants, performed exactly as you'd expect a poorly received horror title to perform in normal times, plunging nearly 60% from last weekend. It took in $3 million from Friday to Sunday, for a ten-day gross of $11.8 million. Unhinged was the only other release to make it to 7 figures this weekend, as the thriller made $1.8 million for a total of $11.4 million.
Bill & Ted Face the Music, which is also available on VOD (and reports suggest it is selling well in that format) made $0.8 million at the theaters this weekend, for a theatrical-only gross of $2.3 million in ten days. Still playing exclusively in Canada, The SpongeBob Movie: Sponge on the Run earned $0.4 million from Canucks, for a total of $3.3 million.
As for the only other two movies that appear to be in wide release right now, neither did particularly well. The Personal History of David Copperfield and Words on Bathroom Walls each took in around $0.3 million, for total grosses of $1 million and $1.5 million, respecivally. Of course, with nothing to replace either title, both could linger in theaters for weeks.
This week's one wide opening is the one remaining big studio film set for September, the Sony romcom The Broken Hearts Gallery starring the little known Geraldine Viswanathan. It at least offers something substantially different from Tenet, New Mutants, and Unhinged. Will that be enough to bring in moviegoers? Of course, the concern won't be over how a small romcom does, but how Tenet will hold up. We'll find out that answer next week.
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