Any question that last week‘s Barbenheimer phenomenon was a fluke was blasted away this weekend as both films continued to dominate, fending off Disney’s latest, The Haunted Mansion.
Barbie only dropped off 43% which is amazing. This picture remains the queen of the box office. As I stated last week, this movie is an EVENT and people continue to turn out for it in full pink regalia.
But Barbie is a movie designed for the masses, so its success — while exceeding expectations — shouldn’t come as much of a surprise. On the other hand, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a weighty historical biopic, is also proving to be a massive draw. Excellent reviews, word of mouth, and awards season buzz are drawing massive turnouts.
Similarly to Barbie, Oppenheimer only dropped 44% from weekend to weekend. These are excellent holds as most major releases drop at least 50% in the sophomore frames. So this isn’t a matter of The Haunted Mansion just not opening strongly, it’s that Barbie and Oppenheimer are doing tremendously well.
Earning $93 million, Barbie now has the best second weekend in the history of Warner Brothers and is Margot Robbie’s highest-grossing movie. Once again, that’s just over two weeks. This is also the fastest a female-driven picture has crossed the overall $300M mark. Globally, it has amassed $775M, well on its way to crossing the coveted billion-dollar mark.
Taking in $46.2M, Oppenheimer has nabbed the best second weekend of the year for an R-rated movie, beating John Wick: Chapter 4. However, overall time, it still couldn’t measure up to It: Chapter One, which made $60M in its sophomore frame in 2017.
The Haunted Mansion just got stomped. Earning $24.2M, it fell short of its $30M projections. At least it opened better than the 2003 Eddie Murphy-starring version, which premiered at $24M.
Critics didn’t respond positively to this picture, with a 41% Rotten Tomatoes score, but its audience score is much higher at 85%. Its CinemaScore is B+. Those reactions aren’t exactly glowing, which indicates that most people (like me) saw the trailers and thought that this should have been put straight onto Disney+.
Another thing working against The Haunted Mansion is that it is clearly a Halloween movie that Disney decided to put out in July. It should have hit Disney+ by October, and it would do really well at that time.
Disney shifted this film to this date in order to push back The Marvels. That might work out well for The Marvels, as it may not have performed well taking on Barbenheimer. Let’s face it, Marvel has been having a rough go lately, but, hopefully, this picture will sun it when it comes out on November 10.
Here is the official chart:
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- Barbie (Warner Brothers) – 3-Day $93M/ Total $351M (Week 2)
- Oppenheimer (Universal) – 3-Day $46.2M/ Total $174M (Week 2)
- Haunted Mansion (Disney) – $24.2M (Week 1)
- Sound of Freedom (Angel) – $12.4M/ Total $149M (Week 4)
- Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One (Paramount) – $10.7M/ Total $139M (Week 3)
Could Barbenheimer fall next weekend with the release of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem? It is possible. This could tap into the same multigenerational nostalgia that The Super Mario Bros. Movie did. However, the last cycle of TMNT live-action movies started out great with the first film but fell short with its follow-up Out of the Shadows in 2016. That wasn’t that long ago. Is there still an appetite for this franchise?
TMNT is opening on Tuesday, perhaps to get ahead of the competition. Just for the record, it appears that this movie is great. Its current RT score is an insane 97%.
Opening slightly later is The Meg 2: The Trench. The first Meg did excellently, but has too much time passed for people to still be interested?
Did you hit the theaters this weekend? What did you see? What are you looking forward to?
