While the Australian box office looks like a backwater of the world’s cinema trade at the moment, it is still part of a crucial tangle of ideas playing out in Hollywood affecting the global marketplace on which local producers depend.
Tenet is important because it was supposed to lead off a conga line of blockbusters as the sector recovered in time for Christmas. But it has made AU$45m in North America in just under two weeks, chasing a budget of $250m and a substantial marketing outlay which would be around $125m in normal times.