Anyone trying to sell you on the line that Christopher Nolan’s Tenet isn’t about time travel might want to look at the summer movie release schedule right now, because this thing is dancing all over the calendar: Variety reports that the big-budget sci-fi action flick—once touted as the harbinger of America’s return to its shuttered movie theaters—has now been moved back another two weeks, from July 31 to August 12. With this second two-week move to hit the $200 million film in the space of a month, it’s not hard to think of Warner Bros. desperately slapping snooze on some kind of global pandemic alarm, hoping to wake up in a reality where blockbuster movies are profitable again.
Among other things, the move means that Tenet will take the unorthodox step of opening on a Wednesday, with Warner Bros. stating that it’s hoping the mid-week release will “allow audiences to discover the film in their own time, and we plan to play longer, over an extended play period far beyond the norm, to develop a very different yet successful release strategy.” Meanwhile, we’re going to have to keep an eye out to see whether the studio will once again aggressively reshuffle its schedule in the wake of this latest move, the way it did when Tenet dropped back from July 17 to July 31.
Meanwhile, Disney continues to hold tight to its leading role in the theater chain’s ongoing game of Pandemic Chicken; Mulan remains the first big studio movie on the current schedule, set for July 24. Y’know, for now.