“Barbie”, “Oppenheimer.”
Courtesy of Warner Bros.; Melinda Sue Gordon/Universal Pictures
The summer box office just fell apart.
Filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s female-powered Barbie celebrated a historic domestic launch of more than $155 million, a threshold usually reserved for male-powered superhero themes or top IPs like the latest Harry Potter film. It grossed well over the expected $90 million to $110 million and helped propel one of the biggest weekends in history.
Barbie – which brings Mattel’s iconic fashion doll to life – is also selling in volume in certain overseas markets and is expected to make an international debut worth up to $120 million.
In North America, “Barbie” achieved the biggest domestic debut of all time for a film directed by a woman, alone or otherwise. The solo crown previously belonged to Patty Jenkins’ “Wonder Woman,” which opened 2017 domestically at $103.3 million. In 2019, Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s directed “Captain Marvel” started at $153 million. Barbie also set a number of other records, including landing the best opening of 2023 so far, ahead of The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146.3 million). The next release date in 2023 was Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse ($120.7 million), followed by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 ($118.4 million) and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania ($106.9 million). Otherwise, many releases failed to surpass the $100 million mark.
It’s also the biggest opening for Barbie stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and the biggest three-day opening for a toy-based film, eclipsing Transformers: Dark of the Moon ($115.9 million).
Gerwig’s film topped Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, the other release of the weekend.
Not that Universal’s Oppenheimer is a slacker. The three-hour R-rated historical drama about J. Robert Oppenheimer and the making of the atomic bomb also far exceeded expectations, grossing $80.5 million. That’s the filmmaker’s third-biggest domestic debut, after The Dark Knight Rises ($160.9 million) and The Dark Knight ($158.4 million), unadjusted for inflation. It will also come before the latest summer pictures like The Flash, Elemental, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.
Barbie is heavily female at 68 percent, while Oppenheimer is male-dominated at 64 percent. Oppenheimer’s appearance came as almost more of a surprise to some than Barbie’s given the running time and subject matter.
Other stats: Oppenheimer is the third-biggest opening film of all time for a biographical film in North America, unadjusted for inflation, after American Sniper ($89.3 million) and The Passion of the Christ ($83.8 million).
Abroad, Oppenheimer started with a strong opening of $93.7 million and a worldwide launch of $174.2 million on a $100 million production budget.
Earlier in the weekend, follow-up suggested Nolan’s film would open at a solid $50 million domestically.
Barbie and Oppenheimer’s double win – a phenomenon dubbed ‘Barbenheimer’ – was on display in all its glory on Friday, giving a much-needed boost to cinema attendance and box offices that have yet to fully recover from the pandemic. This will be the first three-day weekend in history where one film grossed $100 million or more and another $50 million or more.
In terms of revenue, this is the fourth-biggest weekend ever, according to Comscore, and the biggest since Avengers: Endgame. Combined ticket sales totaled nearly $305 million, a rare achievement. The sizzling box office is a welcome respite from the ongoing writers’ and actors’ strike that has brought Hollywood to a standstill and sparked fears among theater owners that studios will delay their fall and winter releases if actors can’t promote their films.
Both Barbie and Oppenheimer received an A CinemaScores rating from Friday audiences in the US, and their in-store Rotten Tomatoes critics’ ratings are not far apart – 90 percent vs. 93 percent, respectively.
According to a survey of its members conducted by the National Association of Theater Owners, 200,000 visitors in the US bought tickets to book a double show and see both Barbie and Oppenheimer (it is not clear how many of these customers belong to loyalty clubs and therefore receive a certain number of tickets at a reduced price or for free).
Barbenheimer isn’t making it easy for Tom Cruise’s lead actor, Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One, which grossed a five-day, $78.5 million debut following its July 12 release in US theaters. The film plummeted 64 percent to $19.5 million for total domestic sales of $118.8 million.
Paramount’s seventh “Mission: Impossible” film faces the loss of Imax screens to Oppenheimer and the loss of other premium large format screens to Oppenheimer or Barbie. The upcharge for Imax and PLFs is significant and can have a big impact on the bottom line.
Angel Studios’ independent sleeper hit “Sound of Freedom” is expected to have another strong weekend at $18.8 million after topping the $100 million mark domestically on a production budget of $14-15 million last weekend. The film, which ranks at number 4, has a total domestic gross of $123.4 million.
Touted as a political thriller, the faith-based film stars The Passion of the Christ’s Jim Caviezel as the real-life Tim Ballard, who worked as an agent for the Department of Homeland Security before setting out on his own to bring child traffickers to justice. While the conservative-leaning Sound of Freedom has been discussed on QAnon forums, Angel says it’s not a QAnon film. In late 2021, Caviezel spoke at a QAnon convention in Las Vegas, where he invoked the QAnon slogan “The storm is upon us.”
There’s more to come.
JJuly 23, 7:25 a.m: Updated with weekend estimates.