After a few high-profile flops and disappointments, the duo known as Barbenheimer is reviving cinemas as viewers flocked to see both movies.
Greta Gerwig’s Barbie was an EVENT that people had to see, and not just casually. Viewers turned out in their pink finery, with some actually cosplaying as various real Barbie dolls. There hasn’t been a cinematic event like this since Minions: The Rise of Gru when teenagers were dressing up in suits to attend.
As a result, Barbie scored 2023’s biggest opening, far outpacing its tracking for a $162 million weekend. It has great reviews with a 90% Rotten Tomatoes critical score and a 90% audience score. Exiting audiences gave it an A via CinemaScore. There is already awards season buzz… for BARBIE! Who saw that coming?!
Along the same lines, Oppenheimer, a much more obvious awards entry, is also generating buzz and has been excellently received with a 94% RT score and, just like Barbie, the exact same audience score of 94%. It has also received an A via CinemaScore.
Perhaps due to the Barbenheimer movement, Oppenheimer made an explosive $82.4M, which is astounding for a three-hour-long historical drama with a downer subject matter. Most superhero movies lately can’t even come close to that!
Barbie broke several records, including the best opening for any film from a female director, best opening for a non-sequel or remake, best opening for any movie based on a toy (topping ALL of the Transformers installments), and obviously the best openings for Gerwig, Margot Robbie, and Ryan Gosling.
Oppenheimer marks Christopher Nolan’s third-best opening, but his best non-Batman opening. Just for the record, The Dark Knight Rises opened with $161M and The Dark Knight opened with $158M. This was also the highest opening for an R-rated movie of 2023, besting John Wick: Chapter 4.
It will be interesting to see how these movies leg out over the coming weeks, once the Barbenheimer frenzy has died down. Barbie seems like a movie that many will see multiple times, but Oppenheimer doesn’t. However, that film may be a slow burn, as it skews older and that audience may have skipped out on opening weekend and may trickle in over time, especially if awards buzz continues to grow.
Poor Tom Cruise. After his vocal support for both Barbie and Oppenheimer (and after being seen attending both), his big movie, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, got lost in the shuffle. It didn’t help that this picture had to give up most of its large screens for these others, mainly Oppenheimer. However, it’s possible that M:I will reclaim some of those big screens in the next couple of weeks, depending on how Oppenheimer performs.
M:I made an additional $19.5M, bringing its domestic total to $118.7M.
Meanwhile, Harrison Ford’s disappointment, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny is at least hanging onto the Top Five, earning $6.7M for a domestic total of $159M.
Sandwiched between these two is the faith-based drama Sound of Freedom.
Check out the chart below:
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- Barbie (Warner Brothers) – $155M/ Wk 1
- Oppenheimer (Universal) – $80.5M/ Wk 1
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount) – 3-day $19.5M/ Total $118.7M/ Wk 2
- Sound of Freedom (Angel) – 3-day $19M/ Total $123.6M/ Wk 3
- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney) – 3-day $6.7M/ Total $159M/ Wk 4
Do Barbie and Oppenheimer have something to be scared of? Probably not, but we’ll see as Disney’s The Haunted Mansion will hit theaters next weekend, but it isn’t expected to have a huge opening. It’s only expected to earn in the range of $22M-$37M.
Barbie would have to take a massive tumble to fall below that. But we’ll see, right?
Did you see Barbie or Oppenheimer this weekend? Or both? Will you be seeing either again? Or are you looking forward to The Haunted Mansion?
