The release of Christopher Nolan’s thriller has been paused indefinitely while the US wrestles with Covid-19. But why should the rest of the world have to wait?
Growing up in the 1980s, there was always one classmate who would go to the US for the summer holidays and come back raving about new movies such as ET: The Extra-Terrestrial or Ghostbusters. Us Brits would then have to wait until
Christmas to see them, by which time our expectations had become so over-inflated the movies rarely lived up to them (sacrilege I know, but Ghostbusters was way better in my head). In movie terms, going to the US was like visiting the future. Now, though, the situation has practically reversed.
In recent decades, the time delay has narrowed to the extent that most big movies now come out on the same day, or at least within weeks, everywhere from LA to Lima. However, Covid-19 has created a further complication: most of Europe, Oceania and east Asia has been getting on top of the pandemic. The US has not. So while cinemas are tentatively reopening around the world, they remain almost entirely shuttered in key markets such as
California,
Texas,
Florida and
New York.