from the more-than-a-game dept

With Theaters Closed, The Trailer For Christopher Nolan's 'Tenet' Debuts In Fortnite Instead

With the explosion of the video game industry and the technology that has come along with it, it's starting to get really fun to see what creative minds can do inside of the gaming realm. It's turning games into something much more than they would have been 20 years ago. Back then, games were singular in purpose: play the video game. Today they can be so much more when done right. They can be a social ecosystem. They can be economies onto themselves.

Or they can be a place to premier top tier movie trailers, in the case of Fortnite.

Tonight, a new trailer for Christopher Nolan’s upcoming film Tenet aired in Fortnite. The trailer was introduced by Geoff Keighley, because he’s the only consistency we have left in this topsy-turvy world.

Keighley introduced the trailer, shown at Fortnite’s new Party Royale hub’s movie theater. He spoke with Tenet star John David Washington about his gaming history and his role in the film. The trailer itself featured some clips we’ve seen before, but it didn’t reveal all that much more about the movie, which seems to involve time travel and Robert Pattinson.

While the trailer is now widely available, its first showing was in Fortnite. And that strikes me as both rather strange and very, very cool. There is something about layering entertainment inside other entertainment that just clicks with me. Those Minecraft builds where folks build a working computer inside the game? That's amazing to me. Those people who band together in the latest version of Skyrim just to produce a reproduction of previous Elder Scrolls games in the new engine? I love that stuff. And forward thinking media executives who want to have a little fun during a pandemic and show off a new movie trailer in a movie screen inside a popular video game? I mean, that's just cool.

And it would appear that either Nolan himself or someone on his team is interested in keeping these experiments running, given the closure of most movie theaters in the country.

The Tenet trailer ended with the words “Coming to theaters,” which seems like an awfully ambitious declaration due to, you know, the world. But just as each day brings new horrors, it also brings new possibilities to imagine, as well as Geoff Keighley telling us new things about games.

Keighley ended by announcing that there will be a screening of “an iconic Christopher Nolan film” in Fortnite this summer. (I haven’t seen a Nolan film since Memento, but it’s probably not that.)

Whatever it is, screening an entire movie inside a video game? Sounds cool to me!