Tenet earns $20m on opening weekend in US as 45% of cinemas remain closed

Christopher Nolan movie has healthy first weekend despite sound complaints and venue closures

Tenet has taken $20.2m (£15.3m) on its opening weekend in the United States, a healthy outcome given 45 per cent of film venues in the country remain closed.

The sum is approximately $30m down on director Christopher Nolan’s opening weekend average. His most successful first weekend ever was in 2012, when The Dark Knight Rises earned $248m (£188m).

Warner Bros said: “Domestically, while our results show positive like-for-like theatre indicators compared to previous films such as Dunkirk, there is literally no context in which to compare the results of a film opening during a pandemic with any other circumstance.  

“We are in unprecedented territory, so any comparisons to the pre-COVID world would be inequitable and baseless.”

Tenet is an international espionage film starring Elizabeth Debicki, Robert Pattinson and John David Washington.

It has divided critics, with some deeming it “thrilling” and “cerebral”, and others finding it too confusing.  

Many cinema-goers have also complained about the film’s dialogue being barely audible.

"Tenet is relentlessly impressive, intensely spectacular and a dazzling mind f***," tweeted one fan. "However... the sound mix is so overwhelmingly maximised that it's sometimes difficult to properly hear the dialogue, making an already complex plot unnecessarily more difficult to grasp."