By Chris Kavan - 09/17/20 at 07:46 PM CT
Anticipation for Tenet has tapered off and with more movies either delaying their openings - or rumors to such a move - it's going to be a bleak fall season for movie theaters. Tenet should have no problem holding on to the top spot - and a few more markets (though not the major markets of New York, Los Angeles or San Franciso... yet) are opening up, so it will be interesting to see what this third weekend brings. The lone new wide release - and the last one for the rest of September at this point - is Infidel from indie studio Cloudburst Entertainment. I don't expect this to make many waves.
INFIDEL Technically, Infidel has already been released - but you probably missed it's limited debut back in November of 2019. And I'm guessing a lot of people are going to miss it again despite it's new wide release this Friday. Infidel follows an American journalist played by Jim Caviezel (still best known for his torture-porn Jesus) who is arrested on fabricated charges by the Iranian government after speaking out in Cairo, Egypt. His wife (Claudia Karvan) does her best to get the American government to get involved, but when she realizes they won't be of any help, she has no other option but to go and get him herself. Director Cyrus Nowrasteh shot the film on location - which had to involve several hoops, so it does have that going for it but, one big caveat (in my mind anyway) is that the film has co-production from D'Souza Media - the same Dinesh D'Souza who is essentially a propaganda mouthpiece with "documentaries" Death of a Nation and Hillary's America - so take that as you will. That aside, even if Infidel is a powerful film, it just doesn't have enough recognition or star power to make that big of impact - especially with things the way they are. Heck, if it even breaks the top five I would consider that a success.
We're entering dangerous waters here - the rest of September and pretty much all of October is now empty of any major new releases. Death of the Nile (Oct. 23rd) is the only thing close to approaching a blockbuster on the near horizon. It remains to be seen if theaters can weather this storm - especially if more movies decide to push back their opening dates.
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