Every 2020 Movie That Could Make A Billion Dollars

9. Tenet

christopher nolan tenet
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Christopher Nolan is one of the few filmmakers working today who can sell a movie largely off the back of his own name. "Tarantino" "Spielberg" "Cameron" "Nolan" - slap one of those guys on a poster, and audience interest will be piqued.

But does that translate into box-office success? For Nolan, the answer is yes. His last three films that didn't feature a man dressed like a bat (Inception, Interstellar, Dunkirk) grossed a minimum of $500 million globally, even in the face of some stiff competition. Half a billion dollars for an original movie is an insane figure, but still, it isn't a billion - so can Tenet be the one that makes it?

The film is supposedly an action-thriller with sci-fi elements, and is set for July, where Nolan movies like The Dark Knight, Inception and Dunkirk made big money. Nobody expected a World War II movie to make $500 million, but strong word of mouth gave Dunkirk some incredible legs, and it just kept on making cash week after week.

Assuming Tenet can generate similar buzz - which it surely will, being a mysterious Nolan picture - the fact that it appears to be of a more "mainstream" genre than Dunkirk could give it even better longevity and even higher grosses.

Plus, it sounds similar to Inception purely in terms of its genre. Inception grossed $830 million when it released in 2010, and interestingly, if you adjust for inflation, it would be right on the cusp of a billion dollars in 2019. True, the market is a lot different today, but we haven't had an original, live-action cultural sensation in years, and if anything can scratch that itch, it's going to be Tenet.

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Danny has been with WhatCulture for over ten years, and is currently Doctor Who Editor and WhoCulture Channel Manager, overseeing all of WhatCulture's Whoniverse coverage. In 2022, he took charge of WhoCulture and has grown it into the biggest Doctor Who channel on YouTube, and one of the biggest Doctor Who communities on the web full-stop. He has been writing and video editing since his early teens, and first got a taste for content creation after making his own Doctor Who trailers, off the back of a burning obsession with the Matt Smith era of the show. Like many his age, he first got into Doctor Who with the 2005 revival, but has since gone back and fallen in love with the classic years too. If you need someone to recite every Doctor Who episode in order, or to give you a random factoid about the making of Gridlock, Danny is the person to ask!