The official runtime for Tenet has been announced. And if you’re worried about sitting in a movie theater for one long stretch of time, you might want to skip this Christopher Nolan thriller upon initial release. While the runtime has some heft to it, Tenet is also clocking in as one of Christopher Nolan’s shortest movies to date.
Tenet has an official runtime of 149 minutes and 59 seconds. That is just shy of two and a half hours. Sitting with a mask on your face while you sneak popcorn underneath for that duration may sound like a choir to some. The movie is scheduled to open in Mid-August. But last we heard, speculation claims that it will be delayed yet again as the pandemic continues to spike across the country.
AMC, Regal and Cinemark were all scheduled to open in Mid-July. Here we are, and California has officially shut down all movie theaters in the state as the health crisis continues to cause problems across the country. The summer movie season is officially dead. Christopher Nolan was pushing hard to release Tenet this coming weekend, on July 17. That proved to be an impossibility. Now, Tenet will arrive on August 12. Will That stick? Only time will tell.
Tenet isn’t a short movie by any means. But it will run almost twenty minutes shorter than Christopher Nolan’s 2014 sci-fi thriller Interstellar, which clocked in at 169 minutes. Both 2012’s The Dark Knight Rises and 2008’s The Dark Knight are also longer. They run 165 minutes and 152 minutes, respectively. Batman Begins comes in at 140 minutes even.
Inception, which is celebrating its 10th anniversary of release, clocks in at one minute longer than Tenet. Inception will be back in theaters starting this weekend, to make up for the missing Tenet, though you may have to hunt for theaters that are still open and showing it. It will be playing at select Drive-Ins.
Tenet isn’t Christopher Nolan’s shortest movie. That distinctions goes to the 2017 war epic Dunkirk, which runs at a manageable 106 minutes. Nolan’s little-seen 1998 debut Following is shorter at just one hour and nine minutes, but that doesn’t count as one of his major theatrical releases. His first real movie in theaters was Memento, which clocks in at 113 minutes. His 2002 thriller Insomnia runs a little bit longer at 118 minutes. Starting with 2006’s Prestige, Christopher Nolan had more control over the studio, and starting cutting his movies at an epic pace, with that drama coming in at 130 minutes.
If Tenet misses its August release date, there is no guess as to when it could eventually arrive in theaters. It all depends on how the health crisis continues to play out across the states in the next few months. The story behind Tenet still remains somewhat of a mystery. Headlined by John David Washington and Robert Pattinson, the plot deals with international espionage and time inversion.
With the country’s current state of affairs, two and a half hours may sound like a lifetime for moviegoers anxious about attending public screenings. In all likelihood, a lot of states won’t see theaters reopen before September. So we can probably expect to see Tenet land sometime in the fall. Which probably isn’t making Christopher Nolan a very happy camper. He really wants the movie in theaters. And He definitely won’t be releasing it to streaming as a PVOD release unless something drastic changes the cinematic landscape yet again. The runtime info comes courtesy of The Independent.
