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What is so interesting about how Warners is set up specifically revolves around a little picture on July 17th entitled "Tenet" from director Christopher Nolan. There are two very distinctive schools of thought in the industry on whether the film will remain on this July date.

The first is that Nolan won't risk his film going out to half full or closed theaters and is waiting to move the film to a safer timeline. Nolan's films always perform well overseas and if the worldwide cinema landscape is still a hodgepodge of open and closed statuses then it might simply not be possible to cobble together a representative global break.

But let's play this out a bit. Let's say that the majority of cinemas worldwide are open in some form or fashion by mid-July with more coming online every week thereafter. This doesn't have to be a typical tentpole opening where 1/3 of a film's total gross comes from opening weekend or even opening week. If there aren't 3-4 movies opening on subsequent weeks as there generally are in a "normal" summer, "Tenet" has the ability to leg out a successful theatrical run with a weekly gross report that looks more like the 1960s and 70s rather than the get-'em-in-get-'em-out quick hits we're used to since we started this millennium.

Also, Nolan is one of the most vocal proponents of the theatrical experience and it must be eating him alive to see theaters closing or in peril. If there's any chance for a representative global break on July 17th the bet here is that he keeps it and "Tenet" becomes the first tentpole title that theaters open with.

It will take some doing. Moviegoers may not be ready to return to cinemas in droves, even for a Nolan film. Therefore it would behoove Warners to go out with minimum playtime guarantees from exhibition, something like eight weeks in the larger markets and at least four weeks in the smaller cities, which coincidentally would take smaller exhibitors right into the studio's "Wonder Woman: 1984" avail. How convenient.

Warners could also require a minimum number of screens per theater. If adjusted social distancing measures are instituted and, for example, theaters can only operate at 50% capacity, the studio will need to secure several auditoriums per complex in order to ensure maximum grossing potential.

As mentioned, Christopher Nolan is one of the last champions of theatrical. Directors like Martin Scorsese have spent their careers talking about their love of cinema but his recent Netflix gig with "The Irishman" deeply hurt many exhibition veterans, not only in North America but around the world.

It could be that it's now left to Nolanand perhaps Tarantino as wellto carry the flag for an industry they love and that had come under a great deal of heat even before COVID slapped it silly. The chance to be the hero on the hill by making "Tenet" the film that brings people back to the movies may be too alluring for Nolan to pass up.

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It will take some doing. Moviegoers may not be ready to return to cinemas in droves, even for a Nolan film. Therefore it would behoove Warners to go out with minimum playtime guarantees from exhibition, something like eight weeks in the larger markets and at least four weeks in the smaller cities, which coincidentally would take smaller exhibitors right into the studio's "Wonder Woman: 1984" avail. How convenient.

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TCTTS said:

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If Tenet keeps its July date, I'll be there in a hazmat suit if necessary.

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• The studio space has been divided into quadrants, with three production teams isolated from each other and only three actors allowed to cross between the groups. "There will be no more than 100 people a day in any area, we'll implement the four-square-metre rule and the one-and-a-half-metre social distancing rule," Fremantle Australia boss Chris Oliver-Taylor told Australia's ABC. Because of that setup, if someone gets sick, only the group whose member is affected will be suspended and the shoot can continue with the other two groups.
• There will be a nurse on set, and everyone entering the site will have their temperatures checked;
• Male actors will have no make-up, female actors will not be touched up;
• There will be no physical contact between actors including kissing, holding hands or intimate scenes;
• Actors will also practice social distancing, with camera trickery used to make them look closer together;
• There will be be no outside extras, with crew members already on set doubling as background performers.

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