As of Thursday, British-American auteur Christopher Nolan's Tenet has earned more than 250 million yuan ($36.6 million) at the box office, becoming one of the biggest blockbusters boosting the September market.

With its IMAX total surpassing 36 million yuan between Sept 4 and 6, the film, which premiered across the mainland last Friday, has become Nolan's top-earning opening weekend in the IMAX format in the world's second-largest film market.

Figures from IMAX show Tenet's opening weekend ticket revenues surpassed his galaxy adventure Interstellar (2014) by 27 percent and his war epic Dunkirk (2017) by 15 percent, despite Chinese theaters keeping seating capacity at less than 50 percent under COVID-19 prevention protocols.

With its mind-bending plotline, most diehard fans say they have watched the film a second time in order to "decode" more clues to understand the complex time-travel story of international espionage.

So far, the film has obtained a rating of 7.8 out of 10 on Douban, the country's most popular review site.