The box office race between black and pink is already increasing and there is a clear winner. Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s film about the famous Mattel doll, has captured the pulse of Oppenheimer, the biopic about the creator of the atomic bomb directed by Christopher Nolan. Gerwig’s film, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, grossed $337 million, or €303 million, between Thursday, Friday and Saturday, of which 155 (almost €140 million) came from the US box office alone. The most apocalyptic Nolan film starring Cillian Murphy didn’t fare too bad either: $94 million worldwide and another $80.5 million in the US, for a total of almost $174 million, €157 million worldwide.
Overall, both have surpassed €460 million in global box office, quite a milestone, especially for struggling cinemas where neither the adventures of Harrison Ford’s latest Indiana Jones nor Tom Cruise’s aerial stunts in the latest installment of Mission: Impossible have managed to surpass a box office that has remained very weak since the pandemic.
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For now, and thanks to this data, it is clear that in a collaborative phenomenon called Barbenheimer, Barbie and Oppenheimer have managed to complement each other and inspire millions of people to refresh themselves, both physically and mentally, in spaces around the world. So much so that their premiere together made this weekend the fourth-best weekend in history at the US box office, a particularly notable phenomenon since neither is a film about superheroes who are usually reserved the Olympus of “No Tickets Left”.
Director Christopher Nolan and actor Cillian Murphy at the ‘Oppenheimer’ premiere in London July 12, 2023. MAJA SMIEJKOWSKA (Portal)
The two films break some records. After an immense marketing campaign, Barbie becomes the highest-opening film about a woman in the US and is already the highest-opening title of 2023, beating the film about Super Mario Bros., the plumber from the Nintendo video game, as well as the latest Spiderman and Guardians of the Galaxy franchises by about 10 million. It’s also the best premiere for the two leads, Robbie – also a producer – and Gosling, and the best for Warner beyond a DC Comics film or sequel. Additionally, when it premieres, Oppenheimer becomes Nolan’s third best-selling film, behind the two for The Dark Knight. It is the third best-selling autobiographical film opening after 2014’s The Sniper and 2004’s The Passion of the Christ.
The numbers mean that both films far exceed their production costs. Barbie reportedly has $145 million; These numbers have already been doubled. Oppenheimer cost 100. The pair have managed to make this penultimate weekend of July the only one in the US to have one film break the 100 million mark and another break the 50 million mark. It is estimated that around 200,000 people bought tickets to see both in their country of origin this weekend.
There is also a third, much more unexpected phenomenon: that of the independent film Sound of Freedom, El sonido de la libertad, a film that has been on the back burner since 2018 and whose rights have been acquired by Angel Studios, who are distributing it thanks to a crowdfunding campaign for which 7,000 people donated a total of five million dollars. The true story of Tim Ballard, a former US government employee who went to Colombia and disarmed a child trafficking network, has grossed more than $110 million since its July 4 premiere. A controversial work that even astounded Donald Trump, who organized a press pass at his home in New Jersey, attended by its producers – the Mexican Jorge Verástegui, ultra-Catholic and founder of an extreme right-wing party in Hollywood – its director and its controversial protagonist Jim Caviezel.
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