Christopher Nolan Teases Tenet’s ‘Big Screen Experience’

John David Washington in Tenet

Tenet may not be the first new offering being thrown onto the big screen after this month-long cinematic drought, but there’s no question that plenty of people are looking forward to the latest Christopher Nolan movie. It’s also no secret that Nolan is a big supporter of the theatrical experience, but even by his standards, he believes that Tenet is the most big screen-worthy of his movies yet.

Here’s what Christoper Nolan recently had to say about Tenet and why it’s worthy of checking out in theaters later this summer:

I don’t want to say too much about it other than we’re extraordinarily excited about what we’ve been able to do with this material. I think of all the films that I’ve made, this is perhaps the one that is most designed for the audience experience, the big screen experience. This is a film whose image and sound really needs to be enjoyed in your theaters on the big screen and we’re very, very excited for you to see what it is we’ve done. We’ve made big films in the past, but this is a film whose global reach and level of action is beyond anything we’ve ever attempted before. I think we only would have been able to pull off this film with the level of experience we’ve had doing action films in the past.

Christopher Nolan delivered this statement in a filmed message played to participants of CineEurope (via Deadline), which is being held as an online conference this year due to the health crisis. Nolan also added that he’s finishing up Tenet and looks forward to seeing the public’s reaction to the movie. Tenet was previously scheduled to come out on July 17, but it’s now set to drop on July 31, following a week behind Disney’s Mulan.

While some movies transitioned to VOD or streaming offerings after their theatrical plans were interrupted earlier this year, Tenet has been staying the course on its journey to being shown on the silver screens. Granted, considering how reportedly expensive it was to make Tenet, scrapping its theatrical release entirely and making it available for digital rental right off the bat almost certainly wasn’t a financially feasible option.

But besides that, considering how the Tenet trailers have done a good job showing off how it’ll be quite the visual spectacle, and now taking into account Christopher Nolan’s above comments, if you’ve been itching to see a movie in theaters, it sounds like Tenet will be worthy of a ticket purchase. That said, don’t discount the possibility that Tenet’s release could be pushed back again, which is what happened with fellow Warner Bros movie Wonder Woman 1984.

As for what we can expect from Tenet, the movie follows a secret agent who’s been tasked with stopping World War III, and a strange phenomena called time inversion factoring heavily into his mission. The main cast includes John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, Kenneth Branagh, Dimple Kapadia and Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Keep checking back with CinemaBlend for more Tenet-related coverage, and be sure to look through our 2020 release schedule to learn what other movies are slated to open later in the year.

Adam Holmes
Senior Content Producer

Connoisseur of Marvel, DC, Star Wars, John Wick, MonsterVerse and Doctor Who lore, Adam is a Senior Content Producer at CinemaBlend. He started working for the site back in late 2014 writing exclusively comic book movie and TV-related articles, and along with branching out into other genres, he also made the jump to editing. Along with his writing and editing duties, as well as interviewing creative talent from time to time, he also oversees the assignment of movie-related features. He graduated from the University of Oregon with a degree in Journalism, and he’s been sourced numerous times on Wikipedia. He's aware he looks like Harry Potter and Clark Kent.