Now that it’s off the release cal­en­dar, when will we get to see Tenet?

This was bound to hap­pen even­tu­al­ly. In a show of hubris so clas­si­cal­ly self-assured that it bor­dered on the Gre­cian, the high­er-ups at Warn­er Broth­ers had decid­ed to post­pone the release of their Christo­pher Nolan tent­pole Tenet from July to August. But as fate would have it, America’s gov­ern­ment required more than four weeks to reverse the effects of the world­wide pan­dem­ic that has gut­ted the econ­o­my and oblit­er­at­ed what we once thought of as infrastructure.

So, they’re learn­ing – instead of post­pon­ing yet again, Warn­er Bros exec­u­tives have now removed Tenet from the release sched­ule indef­i­nite­ly, though an item on The Wrap report­ing the news sug­gests that a new release date will be announced soon. That bul­letin also spec­i­fies that the new date will most like­ly be lat­er in 2020, which would sug­gest that in actu­al­i­ty, no one has learned anything.

Announc­ing release dates for any­thing at all, whether it’s Tenet or Mulan or Black Wid­ow, will be a nec­es­sar­i­ly los­ing game until the coro­n­avirus cri­sis has been brought under con­trol. When that will hap­pen is anyone’s guess at this point, but oper­at­ing under the delu­sion that things can be forced back to nor­mal­cy by the mar­ket sim­ply decid­ing so is non­sen­si­cal and dangerous.

The mil­lion-dol­lar ques­tion of ​“When will we, the peo­ple, get to see Tenet?” is a trick, because no one actu­al­ly knows. Demand­ing an answer forces author­i­ta­tive bod­ies to make their best esti­mate, and cre­ate anoth­er fresh wave of dis­ap­point­ment when their sched­ules turn out not to dic­tate the tide of dis­ease. We must instead make peace with the not-know­ing, with the end­less wait­ing, and with the uncer­tain­ty that what we once thought of as the sta­tus quo will be return­ing any time soon.

Warn­er Bros. released a state­ment that they won’t pur­sue a ​“tra­di­tion­al glob­al day-and-date release,” a vagary sug­gest­ing that they may release the film over­seas before com­ing to North Amer­i­ca. But the stu­dio needs Tenet to be a mon­ey­mak­er to ensure its con­tin­ued sur­vival, so this indus­try observ­er is skep­ti­cal that they’ll be will­ing to put it in the­aters still at one-third capacity.

It may be a long, long while until we’re graced with the sight of John David Wash­ing­ton unshoot­ing bul­lets out of a slab of con­crete. Those won­der­ing just how long may instead spend that time won­der­ing how long devel­op­ing a mass-mar­ket vac­cine will take.