Nolan spent over 20 years thinking about the ideas at the core of Tenet before writing a single word of the screenplay. He spent…

Nolan spent over 20 years thinking about the ideas at the core of Tenet before writing a single word of the screenplay. He spent five more years writing it. The secrecy around the project was total. The film went by the codename Merry-Go-Round during production. Actors who auditioned had to do so with scenes from other sci-fi films because no one outside the inner circle was allowed to read the script. When the cast was finally assembled, Pattinson and Washington were taken to a locked office at Warner Bros. to read the full screenplay. Michael Caine was only given his own scenes. The 747 airplane crash sequence was entirely practical. The production team originally planned to use miniatures. While scouting locations in Victorville, California, they discovered a massive array of decommissioned planes and realized it was more efficient to buy a real 747 and crash it for real on camera. For the inversion sequences, the cast did not just perform movements in reverse. They also learned to speak their lines backwards phonetically, which were then reversed in post-production to sound normal. Nolan cast John David Washington after attending the world premiere of BlacKkKlansman at the 2018 Cannes Film Festival. Film: Tenet (2020)