The summer film Barbie, which was preceded by an intensive marketing campaign, had its best start of 2023 with $155 million at the North American box office on a successful weekend also marked by the release of Oppenheimer (80.5 million), specialist company Comscore announced Sunday.
• Also read: “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”: “Barbenheimer” madness!
• Also read: Barbie makes it rain millions
According to industry publications The Hollywood Reporter and Deadline, the two highly-anticipated films should allow theaters in the US and Canada to post their best weekend box office receipts since the COVID-19 pandemic, which hit theaters hard.
Fueled by a wave of pink marketing from toy company Mattel, which released the first Barbie doll in 1959, and production partner Warner Bros., Greta Gerwig’s comedy fares better at launch than Super Mario, inspired by the famous video game character (146 million in early April), or the sequel to James Cameron’s Avatar (Avatar: The Way of the Water, 134 million in December 2022).
In a fun and tongue-in-cheek reimagining that takes soaking pink and sequins to the second tier, Barbie, played by Margot Robbie – Ryan Gosling plays Ken – is asked to swap her heels for Birkenstock sandals in order to step out of her perfect world of Barbieland and into the real world.
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It is ranked as the best theatrical release by a woman directed in North America, ahead of Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman (2017) and co-directed Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck’s Captain Marvel (2019).
Oppenheimer, a biographical film by Christopher Nolan about the American physicist who developed the atomic bomb, has also got off to a great start for a three-hour film, according to Comscore, grossing 80.5 million.
The simultaneous release in the middle of summer of these two much-anticipated films with opposite stories caused a stir among cinema-goers and the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon swept social media.
According to the National Association of Theater Owners in the United States, more than 200,000 moviegoers planned to see both films on the same day over the weekend.
Controversial child trafficking film Sound of Freedom topped the podium at $20 million, followed by Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning ($19.5 million) and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($6.7 million).