Following an astonishing seven consecutive weeks in the global box office top five, Christopher Nolan and Universal are closing out the summer blockbuster season with a cash pile Scrooge McDuck would be proud of.
With a $30 million (£24 million) opening in China last weekend and global box office receipts now passing $850 million (£673 million), Oppenheimer is officially the third highest grossing film of Nolan’s career (behind the obscure indie pairing of The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises), and the third biggest film of 2023, behind the slightly more colourful juggernauts Barbie and The Super Mario Bros. Movie.
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According to Variety, the unprecedented success of Nolan’s nuclear biopic puts it far closer to the hallowed $1 billion mark than most forecasters predicted. It’s already the second biggest film to receive an R-rating in the states, a move which usually hampers box office takings by locking out the all-important family crowd (in all fairness, it’s hard to imagine many families would take their young ‘uns to a black-and-white physicist biopic anyway, but the stat is still impressive). The only adult (not like that) film with a higher gross so far is 2019’s Joker, currently sitting at a cool $1.074 billion (£794 million).
Calm down, Cillian – you’ve just made $850 million! (Credit: Universal Pictures)
With the conclusion of James Gunn’s Guardians trilogy knocked down into third place, we could be set to cross a very exciting cinema milestone by the end of the year. Unless Aquaman 2 and The Marvels match their respective billion dollar first installments, 2023 looks like it could be the first year with no franchise movies in the global top three since 2001. That year, Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring and Monsters, Inc claimed the top spots.
That’s a huge moment for the cinema industry worldwide, potentially indicating that audiences are hungrier for original filmmaking than the last few years would suggest. Of course, with Mario and Barbie claiming the top spots, maybe we just want more films about toys (if that’s the case, assume official Oppenheimer dolls will be flying off the shelves soon).
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Still, Oppenheimer's success has led to a much more positive mood around movie-loving circles than we’ve seen for some time. If two of the three box office juggernauts of the last year can be thoughtful, original pieces from interesting auteurs, maybe the future of Hollywood is a bit brighter than we thought. Assuming they sort those strikes soon, of course.
