Can Tenet Single Handedly Bring Back Moviegoing?

It seems like there’s a lot riding on this one. Movie theaters have been closed since March. The last big movie release exclusively in movie theaters was Disney & PIxar’s Onward. Streaming services like Netflix, Disney+, Hulu, HBO Max, Peacock, and more seem to be dominating the media conversation. Many people wonder whether moviegoing is gone for good. There are a lot of reasons why it’s all riding on Tenet.

Sure other movies have been released at the movie theater. Unhinged starring Russell Crowe earned $4mm at the box office last weekend. While that would be a paltry number in almost any week for a major release, the $4mm was treated as a godsend, a testament that movie theaters will come back. But will they?

The COVID-19 pandemic has severely impacted the financial status of many movie theaters from the big publicly traded companies down to the mom and pop owned movie theaters. Not many businesses can run on no revenue for the last 6 months.

Movie Studios have found other ways to monetize their movie content. Some studios have launched their own OTT streaming platforms like Disney+, HBO Max, and Peacock. Other studios have launched movies on what’s known as PVOD (Premium Video On Demand) where you pay about $20-30 to access a movie on its release date for 2 days.

But let’s not get it twisted. Movie studios have ample incentive to get movie theaters back up and running again. The amount of money made on a theatrical release far exceeds what could be had releasing exclusively on demand.

Universal Pictures launched Trolls World Tour back in April on PVOD. The film, according to reports, took in over $100million on PVOD revenue. While that’s a nice number and surely inflated by the effects of the Coronavirus, a major release for the studios many times will take in much more money than that. Just look at Universal’s Minions which took in over $1 billion at the box office. That’s revenue that the studios want.

However more than studio revenue, balance sheets, and profits, there’s a human element of going to the movies. It’s the number 1 event activities for families in the United States. It’s the site of many date nights and family outings. It’s where people to go congregate, to experience, to feel in a communal environment. That shared experience is really the magic of moviegoing, a magic that we do not experience at home.

So Christopher Nolan, Tenet, we are looking at you and we have our hopes riding on you. If Tenet can brings audiences back to the movie theaters, we will most likely see other movie studios release big budget movies on the big screen in a movie theater near you. If Tenet fails to meet expectations and the movie studio loses a lot of money on it, you may not see another major release in the movie theater until there are less governmental restrictions on movie theaters or even until there’s a vaccine for COVID-19.

Can Tenet do it? Can it save moviegoing? We’ll find out the answer to that question very soon.