Christopher Nolan’s Tenet launched in the Middle Kingdom on Friday grossing RMB 62.3M, which included previews, translating into a $9.2M take. Pic’s day, at $8.6M, bested local epic The Eight Hundred which is estimated to have grossed $8.2M for a running total of $323.9M.
It’s not certain yet if Tenet will best Eight Hundred for the top spot at China’s weekend box office. Nolan’s time travel thriller noir is eyeing between $30M-$40M, which at the low end would still beat the filmmaker’s previous feature Dunkirk in China, which opened to $29.6M in September 2017 and finaled at $51M, repping 15% of that WWII movie’s $337.2M overseas total. Sources inform us that the estimated overseas box office for Tenet, sans China, is to $70M through yesterday.
Our sources say that Tenet was in play at 62% of China’s available screen supply. Maoyan audience scores are at 8.7 for Tenet versus Dunkirk‘s 8.1.
Tenet officially opened last night in the U.S. after three nights of Early Access previews. Warner Bros. will report all their numbers officially on Sunday morning, nothing beforehand. The three-day stateside estimate for Tenet at 2,800+ cinemas in a marketplace where NY, most of California (except Napa and San Diego), New Mexico, North Carolina and parts of Washington, Florida, Michigan, Oregon and Pennsylvania are closed is $20M. Tenet is hoping to bank north of $50M from additional offshore openings in Russia, Serbia, Slovenia, Nigeria and Ghana.
The Nolan movie will face some serious competition next weekend in China when Disney’s Mulan finally marches in for a big screen release on Sept. 11.