Greta Gerwig
Barbie grossed $377 million, while Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer took home $174 million, making Barbenheimer the biggest box office weekend of 2023 to date
guardianship staff and agencies
Monday 24 July 2023 at 02:24 BST
Greta Gerwig made history when “Barbie” fetched $377 million in its worldwide opening weekend.
At the North American box office – which includes the US and Canada – Barbie took the top spot with box office sales of a whopping $155 million from 4,243 locations, surpassing The Super Mario Bros. Movie and every Marvel film released that year to become the biggest opening of the year.
Barbie Review – a rollicking, candy-colored feminist fable
The social media-driven merger of Gerwig’s Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer as “Barbenheimer” brought record-breaking moviegoers back to theaters to see both films as a double. Oppenheimer also exceeded expectations, grossing $80.5 million in 3,610 theaters across the US and Canada. It was Nolan’s biggest non-Batman debut and one of the best starts of all time for an R-rated biographical drama.
It is also the first time that one film has grossed more than $100 million and another film has grossed more than $80 million over the same weekend. Monday US time, when all is settled, will likely become the industry’s fourth-biggest grossing weekend ever at more than $300 million.
Internationally, Barbie earned $182 million across 69 territories for a worldwide weekend of $337 million, while Oppenheimer earned $93.7 million across 78 territories and even managed to surpass Barbie in India for a worldwide total of $174.2 million. In the UK, cinema chain Vue said a fifth of customers had seen the cinema Both films were shown in a double bill over the weekend in what was the UK’s biggest cinema ticket sale since Covid.
Barbenheimer hurt Ticket Sales for Mission: Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part I, which fell 64% after a good opening weekend and strong reviews. After losing Imax screens to Oppenheimer, the Tom Cruise vehicle contributed $19.5 million to North American box office receipts, which reached $118.8 million.
According to PostTrak, at the historic Barbie opening, 65% of the audience were women and 40% of ticket buyers were under 25 years old. In comparison, 62% of the Oppenheimer audience was male and 63% were over 25 years old, with a surprising 32% being between 18 and 24 years old.
Oppenheimer and Barbie bring best UK weekend since Covid to Vue cinemas
This is the comeback weekend Hollywood has been dreaming of since the pandemic. There have been big openings and successes — including Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and Avatar: The Way of Water — but the fact that two films are simultaneously successful is remarkable.
“It was a truly historic weekend and continues the positive box office momentum of 2023,” said Michael O’Leary, President and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners. “People realized that something special was happening and they wanted to be a part of it.”
And yet disaster looms in the background as Hollywood studios continue to tussle with striking actors and writers for fair contracts.
Barbie and Oppenheimer were the last films in the 2023 calendar to enjoy a major global press tour. Both lasted until the eleventh hour and spent the last moment with their movie stars. Oppenheimer even pushed back the London premiere by an hour, knowing that Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Cillian Murphy had to leave early in the film to symbolically join the picket line.
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