Since his humble beginnings with the $6,000 Following and the $9 million Memento, director Christopher Nolan has been making bigger and bigger movies, proving himself a master of big-budget blockbuster filmmaking. Now the internet’s favorite director is making a new movie and if the reports are right, it could have an insane budget, one of the director’s biggest yet.
Christopher Nolan’s new film Tenet has a huge overall budget of €200 million according to ERR News, which is based out of Estonia. where some of the film will be shooting and enjoying some generous production incentives. That’s in Euros though, so based on the current exchange rate of 1 Euro to 1.12 USD, that €200 million converts to an insane nearly $225 million. So needless to say, Christopher Nolan isn’t following up his last movie, 2017's Dunkirk, with a small-scale indie film.
As massive as $225 million sounds though, it wouldn’t quite be Christopher Nolan’s most expensive movie. That title currently belongs to The Dark Knight Rises, which cost a whopping $250 million, according to Box Office Mojo. Of course, once you factor in inflation. it all gets kind of muddled. Either way, Tenet is not cheap. and based on budget alone it will be one of the biggest films of Christopher Nolan’s career.
Following The Prestige, which cost $40 million, all of Christopher Nolan’s films have been 9-digit ventures. Inception and Interstellar both cost in the $160-$165 million range and The Dark Knight ran $185 million. Nolan’s last film Dunkirk was thrifty by his more recent standards, but still rang in at $100 million.
While we can’t necessarily draw too many conclusions about a film based on its budget alone, the reported $225 million budget of Tenet certainly seems to indicate that Christopher Nolan has grand ambitions for this project, and considering the ambition displayed in cheaper films like Interstellar and Inception, that is pretty exciting.
Then again, looking at the cast Christopher Nolan has lined up for Tenet, maybe that’s where all this money is going (not really). The film unites The Dark Knight Trilogy director with future Bruce Wayne Robert Pattinson, as well as BlacKkKlansman’s John David Washington, Widows’ Elizabeth Debicki, Aaron Taylor-Johnson, Kenneth Branagh and Nolan lucky charm Michael Caine, among others.
Plot details are still being kept under wraps, but Tenet is described as “an action epic revolving around the world of international espionage.” Christopher Nolan still hasn’t directed a James Bond film, but this sounds like it could be his spy thriller, of course, “action epic” sounds more like Mission: Impossible.
Robert Pattinson has described Tenet as being “unreal” and having a huge scale. He has also said that it is the length of three movies. Epic action, huge scale and an absurd length are all things that would go a long way towards explaining that $225 million budget.
Tenet is scheduled for a prime summer blockbuster release when it hits theaters on July 17, 2020. We’ll keep you updated on the latest from Tenet as we hear it, but in the meantime, check out our 2019 Release Schedule to see what you can look forward to this year.
