Tenet

About

Tenet is an upcoming 2020 science fiction action film directed by Christopher Nolan. The film stars John David Washington, Michael Pattinson, Michael Caine and more.

History

On May 22nd, 2019, Deadline^[1] reported “Christopher Nolan’s New Movie Gets A Title, Final Cast As Shooting Begins.” In the piece, the outlet announced the film’s title, Tenet. They wrote:

The film, Nolan’s first feature since 2017’s Oscar-nominated Dunkirk, is being described as an action epic evolving around the world of international espionage. He wrote the original screenplay and shooting spanning seven countries is now underway. The studio has already set a July 17, 2020 release date for it.

Three months later, on August 1st, Variety^[2] reported that the film’s first teaser trailer premiered before the film Hobbs & Shaw (shown below, left). On December 19th, Warner Bros. Picture published the official trailer for the film on YouTube. Within six months, the post received more than 20 million views (shown below, right).

Fortnite Trailer Premiere

On May 21st, 2020, the second full trailer for Tenet premiered in the online video game Fortnite. ^[3] That day, GameSpot published a video of the event on YouTube. The post received more than 30,000 views in less than 24 hours (shown below).

The Fortnite premiere became a divisive topic online. Redditor ^[4] The_Iceman2288 posted about the premiere in the /r/movies subreddit. The post received more than 2,100 points (94% upvoted) and 390 comments in less than 24 hours. Twitter ^[5] user @wrmaiden tweeted, “I hope Tenet follows the same bold path as The Rise of Skywalker by putting a plot-driving event within Fortnite and leaving 99.9% of audiences in the dark” (shown below, left).

Film critic Erik Davis responded to the controversy,^[6] "I've seen a fair amount of people criticizing Christopher Nolan for embracing Fortnite to debut the #Tenet trailer, but also to screen one of his older movies in its entirety inside the game. Personally, I think it's pretty brilliant, and here's why…" (shown below, right). In the tread, they go on to explain:

Nolan has always been one of the industry’s leading champions of the cinema event -- of turning the simple act of watching a film into a big, memorable shared experience among millions of people. He's not just a filmmaker who delivers wildly unique blockbuster entertainment at a time when that sort of film is rare, but he's also known for crafting a cinema experience like no other. When we think about going to the movies, we anticipate his films; his big bold storytelling. These days, the next generation spends much of their time living inside virtual environments, like the ones in Fortnite or Roblox… literally millions of young kids, my son included. Not the most wonderful of places, but that is where they are. And they're stuck at home. So instead of getting the audience to come to the experience, he's taking the experience to the audience. Nolan wants to be the one who carves out space for moviegoing within these environments, but at the same time he’s also reinforcing tradition & eventizing cinema. Nolan knows we need the next generation to value it, embrace it and continue it when he’s long gone. But how do you do that? You speak their language & create cinema events inside their virtual playgrounds. But also, when we look back 20 years from now for the first filmmaker who was screening movies in virtual environments full of millions of avatars, guess whose name will be at the top of that list… Christopher Nolan

Search Interest

External References