The fate of the summer movie season rests on one Christopher Nolan film

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At stake, say entertainment players and analysts, is nothing short of the nation’s preeminent form of public entertainment.

“If ‘Tenet’ doesn’t come out or doesn’t succeed, every other company goes home,” said a marketing executive from a rival studio who spoke on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to speak to the news media. “It’s no movies until Christmas.”

Experts describe two fundamentally different visions of what coming months will look like.

In one, audiences eager to leave the house after months of isolation pour in (social distantly) to see the Nolan film, which appears to focus on an agent attempting to prevent a global catastrophe (plot specifics remain tantalizingly murky). Every auditorium is filled with “Tenet” moviegoers; many theaters stay open late to accommodate them. Two other studio films, “Mulan” and “Wonder Woman 1984,” then follow. The summer consigns the spring quarantines to a place of surreal memory

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The other scenario is bleaker: Continued covid-19 fears either prompt Warner Bros. to delay “Tenet” or consumers to stay away, resulting in a flop. Other studios who have been cautiously scheduling a post-“Tenet” release pull their movies. The summer then looks just like spring — “new” entertainment means old Netflix shows and “going out” is a euphemism for walking around the block.

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