Tenet and Mulan were both early fall movie releases that both tried to make the best of a very bad situation, and it appears that Mulan has the edge over Christopher Nolan's latest mind-bending sci-fi action thriller at the box office. Whereas Tenet determinedly pushed for a theatrical-only release, with the marketing urging audiences to see it on the big screen, Mulan skipped theaters in the U.S. and went straight to Disney+ for a premium price of $29.99.
This week has seen another reshuffle of the Disney release slate, with Black Widow - the last Marvel Studios movie that was still hoping for a 2020 release date - pushed back to May 2021. Other releases, like Warner Bros.' superhero blockbuster Wonder Woman 1984 and Universal's horror sequel Candyman, were also delayed in the wake of Tenet disappointing at the box office. Instead of saving the cinematic experience as intended, Nolan's film inadvertently became a canary down the coal mine. The resulting exodus has left the theatrical release schedule almost completely deserted for the next two months.
Obviously the biggest problem for Tenet was releasing in the middle of the coronavirus pandemic, when many theaters in the U.S. were still closed and audiences were reluctant to risk sitting in a room sharing poorly circulated air with a group of strangers for over two hours. But Mulan faced its own challenge in convincing Disney+ subscribers to shell out a steep $29.99 just to watch the movie in their own homes. Here's why Mulan's straight-to-VOD release ultimately proved more successful than Tenet's venture into theaters.
Though they're obviously very different movies with different target audiences, Mulan and Tenet had similar production budgets of around $200 million, and both released on the same weekend in the United States (Tenet released a week earlier in some international markets). Warner Bros. initially reported that Tenet had grossed $20.2 million in its opening weekend, but it was later revealed that this number included previews and the extended Labor Day weekend. Dissecting the reported box office numbers, Collider estimated that the true opening weekend was around $9.5 million. The international ticket sales have been more robust, with Tenet pushing past $250 million worldwide after a month in theaters.
Disney+ sales of Mulan have been kept under wraps by the studio, making it difficult to get a concrete idea of how much money Niki Caro's live-action remake has made. However, analysis of available data suggests that Mulan has grossed $261 million in sales since its release at the start of September. Moreover, the release of the film led to a spike in Disney+ downloads, suggesting that its exclusive availability on Disney's own streaming platform also brought new subscribers onboard. Factoring in the reduced distribution costs of Mulan's Disney+ release, since theaters aren't taking a cut of box office, it looks like Mulan has definitely been a bigger hit than Tenet.
With a quarter of U.S. theaters still closed, and the majority of those in the key markets of New York and California, Tenet was never going to make a huge splash at the box office. Under normal circumstances it would have been targeting a similar performance to Nolan's last trippy sci-fi film, Interstellar, which grossed $693.4 million with a $47.5 million opening weekend. While the coronavirus pandemic was undoubtedly a huge handicap, it did give Tenet a couple of slight advantages to go with all the downsides.
Along with the long-delayed Fox movie The New Mutants, Tenet was the first new exclusively theatrical release in the U.S. since Onward's short run all the way back in March, and its promise of big-screen spectacle was tempting for moviegoers who had been cooped up all summer. With New Mutants and other releases offering little in the way of competition, Tenet also had a clear run at the box office for many weeks after its release. Warner Bros. was likely counting on the movie having strong legs rather than packing screens full in its opening weekend (which wouldn't be possible anyway, with current social distancing measures).
As an original sci-fi movie, Tenet wasn't as safe a box office bet as a live-action Disney remake like Mulan. The film was relying on the prestige of Nolan as a director and upon enticingly cryptic trailers to draw audiences in. But unlike Inception, which had a fairly straightforward hook (a heist movie about breaking into people's dreams) as well as rave reviews from critics and strong word of mouth, Tenet's time-inversion premise was harder for general audiences to wrap their heads around, and the trailers were deliberately coy about the actual story. Upon release its critical reception was more mixed, and audience complaints ranged from the sound mix drowning out the dialogue to the plot being incomprehensible on a first viewing. To beat the odds Tenet would have needed to be 2020's must-see film, and the general consensus is that it wasn't.
In contrast to the unprecedented circumstances of Tenet's release, Disney had the benefit of seeing how other movies had performed with a premium VOD release. An early success story for family audiences was Universal's Trolls World Tour, which was made available to rent for $19.99. VOD sales are harder to pin down than box office ticket sales, but Trolls World Tour grossed an estimated $100 million in rentals within the first three weeks of its release. Though the price tag was calculated to be the approximate cost of two or three people seeing the movie in theaters, there was backlash to the idea of paying $20 for only 48 hours access to the movie.
Taking cues from both the success of Trolls World Tour and the criticisms of its release, Disney moved Mulan to Disney+ with a higher price point of $29.99, but no time limit on availability and no limit on many times it could be watched. This added rewatch value, something that's a cornerstone of Disney movies (as parents who have heard Frozen's "Let It Go" a hundred times can attest). Though technically Disney+ subscribers who pay the premium fee are still only renting Mulan rather than buying it, since discontinuing the base subscription means losing access, it was effectively set up to feel more like a purchase than a rental.
It would be inaccurate to say that Mulan succeeded where Tenet failed, since neither movie is an outright success or failure. These were two films with massive budgets that were suddenly faced with one of the biggest financial crises in the history of cinema. Ten-figure hits like last year's Avengers: Endgame and Joker were never going to happen under the current circumstances. The new best case scenario for Warner Bros. and Disney was to lose as little money as possible, with turning an actual profit as a stretch goal.
Putting aside the question of whether or not Warner Bros. was irresponsible to push forward with Tenet's theatrical release as COVID-19 cases were rising in the U.S., the film is looking to end its theatrical run with between $325 and $350 million, per Forbes. The studio will lose money and it would certainly be a major flop under normal conditions, but realistically even great reviews and word of mouth wouldn't have been enough to push it past the break-even point. Mulan is arguably the bigger flop when it comes to its theatrical release. Despite Disney targeting the lucrative market of China, Mulan is set to make less than half of 2019's The Lion King at the Chinese box office.
The performance of both Tenet and Mulan will already have been put under a microscope by studio analysts, as the film industry fights to adapt to a pandemic-stricken world. So far the main reaction has been to push key releases down the road in the hope that things will get back to normal in 2021. But if the closure of theaters is prolonged by a second wave of coronavirus infections, it's likely that we'll see more movies join Mulan in the move to VOD.
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