'Tenet' Approaching $40 Million+ Opening Overseas, While 'New Mutants' Scares With $8 Million Opening At The Domestic Box Office

Update: “Tenet” made $53 million overseas this weekend.

Despite thousands of theaters both in the U.S. and abroad still closed, the biggest movies of the summer are making big first impressions at the box office, as moviegoing resumes in North America and blockbusters return to the screen.

READ MORE: Christopher Nolan Doesn’t Believe He’s “Saving” Film With ‘Tenet’: “Cinema Is Bigger Than Any One Film”

Though Christopher Nolan‘s latest blockbuster, “Tenet,” won’t open in U.S. theaters until next weekend, it has already premiered in international markets, where Deadline reports the film is looking at a Wednesday to Sunday opening of $40 million+ opening. This seems to be bigger than the previously estimated $25 million for Nolan’s latest, which is playing in some 40 territories. The real challenge will be next weekend, when the film will open in the U.S., as well as China, where it will face some serious competition.

The one film that has already premiered in the U.S., to abysmal reviews and plenty of controversies, is “The New Mutants.” Per The Hollywood Reporter, the last film of the Fox era of the “X-Men” earned just north of $3 million at the Friday box office, with a projected $8 million+ weekend as the superhero horror film played in 2412 theaters across the country.

Though Disney isn’t giving official opening weekend numbers (neither is Warner Bros.), these numbers are both the biggest opening for a film since the pandemic began, and not that bad for a movie that was all but hidden away in the Disney vault forever.

The real threat for both films, but especially “Tenet,” is the Chinese blockbuster “The Eight Hundred.” The war epic has now amassed a whopping $254 million in the Middle Kingdom, with the kind of legs of a film like “Avatar.” Per Forbes, the film will reach around $275 million by Sunday night, bringing it ever closer to the two highest-grossing films of the year so far, “Sonic the Hedgehog,” which earned a total $308 million worldwide.

READ MORE: ‘New Mutants’ Co-Creator Bob McLeod Slams Film’s Whitewashing, Misspelling Of His Name, Says He’s “Done With This Movie”

Depending on how “Tenet” fares in China next week, the war film could even usurp “Bad Boys For Life” as the unlikely highest-grossing film of 2020.