Runtime may keep Christopher Nolan’s Tenet out of theatres in China

Last Updated on August 2, 2021

Last week, we learned that writer/director Christopher Nolan's mysterious new film TENET has a running time of 150 minutes – and close on the heels of that revelation comes word that its length could keep it from playing at theatres in China.

Most theatres in China have re-opened today, July 20th, but one of the new rules that have been put in place to lower the chance of audience members spreading the COVID-19 virus to each other is that all films must have a maximum running time of 120 minutes, limiting the amount of time people have to spend sitting in auditoriums with each other. Unless TENET has 30 minutes trimmed from it for its release in China, it can't be shown.

That's assuming the rule will still be in place by the time TENET is released. Originally scheduled to be released on July 17th, it has already been bumped back to July 31st and then to August 12th, and it won't be surprising if it gets bumped back again as the pandemic continues. The film has been a beacon of hope for theatres, a blockbuster that has been hesitant to vacate the summer schedule, but when will it be safe to release it? And would Warner Bros. be okay with it not playing in China? According to IndieWire, TENET will need to make $800 million worldwide just to break even, which may be tough to do without China.

TENET is "an action epic evolving from the world of international espionage" and has the following synopsis: 

John David Washington is the new Protagonist in Christopher Nolan’s original sci-fi action spectacle “Tenet.” Armed with only one word—Tenet—and fighting for the survival of the entire world, the Protagonist journeys through a twilight world of international espionage on a mission that will unfold in something beyond real time. Not time travel. Inversion.

John David Washington's Protagonist is an operative for an organization called Tenet, but is said to have a "very warm emotional accessibility". He is joined in the cast by Robert Pattison as Neil, "slightly rascally character who operates within what they refer to as this twilight world of operatives in different secret services"; Kenneth Branagh as an Russian oligarch who is "unremittingly dark" and "a pitiless, avaricious, mean, desperate, terrifyingly dangerous individual"; Elizabeth Debicki as a character who develops an "ambiguous and complicated" relationship with Protagonist and happens to be the estranged wife of Branagh's character; and a "completely unrecognizable" Aaron Taylor-Johnson.

Nolan produced the film with Emma Thomas. The cast also includes Dimple Kapadia, Clémence Poésy, Michael Caine, Himesh Patel, Martin Donovan, and Denzil Smith.

The movies that will be shown in China during this time include DOLITTLE (101 minutes), BLOODSHOT (109 minutes), and 1917 (119 minutes). The other blockbuster theatres have been waiting for, Disney's MULAN, will not be impacted by China's runtime limit, because it clocks in at 115 minutes. MULAN is currently scheduled to be released on August 21st.