10 Movie Marketing Stunts That Backfired HARD
6. Trying To Convince People To Visit The Cinema...During A Pandemic - Tenet
Last summer, Christopher Nolan's Tenet was mounted as the must-see blockbuster film that would "save" cinemas, bringing audiences back to multiplexes in droves and driving revenue to the flagging theatrical industry.
Despite a global pandemic making audience's reticence to return to the cinema completely understandable, Warner Bros. pushed ahead regardless with a marketing blitz for Tenet, noting in trailers and on posters that it was available "only in theaters" and "where theaters are open."
Even accepting the fact that Nolan would likely die before allowing one of his lavish tentpoles to go direct-to-VOD, the aggressiveness of the marketing, hyping up Tenet as an epochal cultural event and exploiting FOMO to entice people back to cinemas, was widely criticised as tasteless.
Given that upwards of 5,000 people per day were already dying worldwide from COVID-19 when Tenet was first released, encouraging people to group together in an enclosed space was deemed irresponsible.
And so, it's little surprise that Tenet under-performed commercially, especially in the U.S. where it grossed just $57.9 million.
This had the byproduct of ensuring almost every other scheduled blockbuster moved out of 2020, and may well have even encouraged Warner Bros. to strike the ground-breaking day-and-date HBO Max deal for their entire 2021 release slate.