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“Barbenheimer” exploded over the weekend, generating greater than $235.5 million in box office sales and reviving the domestic box office.
In keeping with figures released on Monday, “Barbie” earned about $155 million during its first three days in theaters, which was the best opening of 2023. Its counterpart “Oppenheimer” grossed $82.4 million over the weekend.
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“I do not think anyone could reasonably predict this sort of coincidence between ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Barbie’,” said Shawn Robbins, principal analyst at BoxOffice.com. “In case you’re going to the theater immediately, the shared experience is like the key Marvel movies and Star Wars, but without those remotely involved franchises.”
Cillian Murphy in Oppenheimer and Margot Robbie as Barbie
Julien De Rosa | AFP | Getty Images; Stuart C. Wilson | Getty Images
Greater than 18.5 million tickets were purchased for the connection Warner Bros.“Barbie” i Universal’s “Oppenheimer”, 12.8 million for “Barbie” and 5.8 million for “Oppenheimer”, based on data from EntTelligence.
“It was a very historic weekend and continues its positive momentum on the box office in 2023,” said Michael O’Leary, president and CEO of the National Association of Theater Owners. “More importantly, it proves once more that America loves going to the films for great movies.”
Each movies received a rating of over 90% “Fresh” on Rotten Tomatoes and inspired viewers to decorate head-to-toe in pink suits or hats for their screenings.
“People saw something special occurring and they desired to be a component of it,” O’Leary said. “Our creative community and studio partners brought audiences two uniquely different, intelligent and original stories that were destined for the massive screen, and movie buffs responded by gathering friends and family and heading to local theaters across the country.”
With additional ticket sales for Paramount’s latest film Mission Not possible, Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse and Angel Studios’ The Sound of Freedom, the weekend box office will hit $302 million, probably the most of any weekend in 2023, based on Comscore.
“The unprecedented performance of those two movies, and the impetus they gave to your entire film market, has solidified cinema as the middle of culture and the epicenter of social interaction,” said Paul Dergarabedian, Senior Media Analyst at Comscore.
The “Barbenheimer” weekend is now the fourth-biggest weekend haul of all time, just under the three-day stretch when Disney Star Wars: The Force Awakens opened in theaters in December 2015 and helped push total weekend sales to $313 million. The second highest is $314 million from the opening weekend of Avengers: Infinity War in April 2018.
Some box office analysts predict that Monday’s official weekend numbers could also be barely higher than Sunday’s estimates, and are pushing “Barbenheimer” weekend up the charts. Nevertheless, they will not come near the highest-grossing weekend ever, which was in April 2019 when “Avengers: Endgame” hit theaters, grossing $357 million by itself and resulting in an overall weekend total of $402 million.
The success of “Barbenheimer” comes at a time when the country’s box office is facing some obstacles. A slew of adult-targeted hits underperformed, leading many within the industry to query whether consumer tastes have shifted away from Hollywood.
Warner Bros. The Flash worked, Pixar’s Elemental did not lure home audiences, and even the return of Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones was not enough to fill theaters.
Nevertheless, the mixture of bombshells and blonde bombshells seems to have inspired many moviegoers to go away their couches and head to the films.
“This can be a historic result that shows viewers’ enthusiasm for a wide range of fresh content,” said Robbins. “These movies fit perfectly into the cultural zeitgeist. They rekindled the summer box office flame and proved that studios generally is a bit more aggressive with counter-programming strategies in the longer term.”
Disclosure: Comcast is the parent company of NBCUniversal and CNBC. NBCUniversal is the distributor of “Oppenheimer” and the owner of Rotten Tomatoes.
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