What do The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Top Gun: Maverick and Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker have in common? They all had smaller opening weekends than Barbie, the gloriously weird Greta Gerwig doll movie which has exploded all box office expectations with a $377 million opening worldwide – and broken a bunch of records in the process.
The highest-grossing domestic opening weekend from a female director. The biggest opening weekend since 2021. The largest Warner Bros. advance sales ever. The biggest launch worldwide for Greta Gerwig, Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling. The list goes on.
But Barbie isn’t the only film taking names this weekend. The teeth-rattling juggernaut that is Oppenheimer debuted with $174.2 million worldwide. That’s the third-best opening of Christopher Nolan’s career, behind The Dark Knight ($198 million) and The Dark Knight Rises ($249 million), and the biggest ever opening weekend for a biopic, ahead of Bohemian Rhapsody's $124 million.
READ MORE: Barbie vs Oppenheimer | Marketing genius or cinematic suicide?
So, which film in the much-anticipated Barbenheimer showdown won the weekend?
The answer, surprisingly, is probably both. Barbie obviously took the lead in pure box office terms, helped by a more audience-friendly 12A/PG-13 rating and one of the strongest marketing campaigns of 2023. But Universal will be over the moon with Oppenheimer's performance, which has surpassed all expectations for a non-franchise, non-sequel drama largely consisting of men talking in small rooms. Nolan movies also typically perform well long after opening weekend, too – and Oppenheimer in particular will benefit from exclusive access to IMAX screens in the states for the next three weeks – much to Tom Cruise’s annoyance.
But the real winner out of the weekend is the cinema industry, with the domestic $235.5m total making Barbenheimer the 4th largest box office weekend of all time, and the first with one film over $100m and another more than $50m.
Cillian Murphy won’t be quite as worried when he sees how much money he just made (Credit: Universal)
Tim Richards, chief executive of Vue International, said: “Vue saw its highest weekend admissions since Avengers: Endgame in 2019 with the release of Barbie and Oppenheimer, proving that when the movies are there, our customers will come to watch them on the big screen.
“Barbie is tracking to become the biggest film of 2023 and has a good chance of getting into the Top 10 highest-grossing films of all time.
“It is an incredibly exciting moment for the industry, and we expect this trend to continue for the coming weeks.”
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But despite the excitement around Barbenheimer, there are worries the weekend could be a last hurrah for the 2023 box office, as rumours swirl around a potential delay to the year’s remaining blockbusters, including Dune: Part Two, if studios fail to reach an agreement with the actors’ guild which would enable actors to head out on promotional tours.
For now, though, with two (basically) original films dominating the box office around the world, the future of cinema looks healthier than it has in some time. The real winner of Oppenheimer vs Barbie might just be all of us.
