Christopher Nolan’s 2020 sci-fi flick Tenet is coming to WarnerMedia’s HBO Max, which the director dissed as the “worst streaming service” just a few months ago.
A Knock to Traditional Theaters
“Good news for anyone experiencing time linearly: Tenet is streaming May 1 on HBO via HBO Max,” the service announced on Twitter. The movie saw its theatrical debut last July.
Starring John David Washington, Robert Pattinson, Elizabeth Debicki, Michael Caine, and Kenneth Branagh, the time-shifting spectacle has been nominated for two Oscars—Best Achievement in Visual Effects and Best Achievement in Production Design.
It took Nolan more than five years to write the screenplay for this flick. As one of his most expensive films, Tenet has grossed more than $363 million worldwide thus far.
Good news for anyone experiencing time linearly: Tenet is streaming May 1 on HBO via HBO Max! ⌛️ pic.twitter.com/dGbxGLOwyu
— HBO Max (@hbomax) March 20, 2021
This sci-fi action thriller revolves around a secret agent who has been taught to manipulate the flow of time in order to prevent a major attack from the future.
The movie hit several New York City theaters earlier this month.
Nolan Calls HBO Max “The Worst Streaming Service”
This is a remarkable development considering Nolan publicly criticized Warner Bros.’ decision to release its 2021 slate of films simultaneously in theaters and on the HBO Max service, including highly-anticipated titles like In the Heights, Dune, and the fourth Matrix.
The controversial decision came several months after Tenet first hit theaters in August of last year. The company apparently never informed the director or anyone else about its decision, which upset Nolan and caused him to go on the record saying the following:
Some of our industry’s biggest filmmakers and most important movie stars went to bed the night before thinking they were working for the greatest movie studio and woke up to find out they were working for the worst streaming service.
He also called Warner’s plan “a real bait and switch.”
Hollywood vs. Streamers Gets Ugly
It’s not just Nolan’s ego that was hurt by Warner’s unilateral decision.
A conflict between streaming services and Hollywood has been brewing for some time now, intensifying during the pandemic. In December, Nolan said that ensuring movies debut in as many theaters as possible was critical to reaching “the widest possible audiences”.
He added that major flicks such as Tenet, Dunkirk, Inception, and The Dark Knight trilogy (all smash hits, all directed by Nolan) “are meant to be big-screen experiences”. Or it could be that HBO Max is too restricting for Nolan’s tastes because the service had approximately 40 million US subscribers as of January 2021.
After all, the figure pales in comparison to the 100 million paying Disney+ subscribers and more than 200 million Netflix subscribers. However, Warner could hardly bring Tenet to those platforms because of its relationship with parent AT&T, which also owns HBO Max.