Barbie and Oppenheimer Box Office Numbers Prove Audiences Want New Kinds of Movies

When you combine both movies’ box office, as well as everything else currently in theaters, it’s the biggest weekend in July ever, and the fourth biggest, period. It’s also an overdue opportunity for Hollywood to begin some serious self-reflection on its old conventional thinking.

Neither Barbie or Oppenheimer is technically a totally unknown “property.” One is based on the most popular toy line in history, and the other is about one of the most famous (and controversial) scientists who ever lived. However, it isn’t what they are which is striking; it’s what they are not. Both films are highly ambitious swings from respected auteurs, neither follows a clearcut studio formula, and both have the good fortune to not be a sequel, prequel, remake, reboot, or “requel.” As far as mainstream audiences are concerned, they’re original novelties that offer something different from what the studio has been betting on as blockbusters for the last 20 years—and they’re blazing past what studios have long assumed are their “sure-thing” blockbusters.

Consider that before this weekend, summer 2023 has been mediocre at best, and a warning bell about icebergs ahead at worst. Previously, the only two mainstream studio releases to meet expectations at the box office this summer were Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, both superhero movies and both sequels. However, one was a sendoff to a popular franchise that was ending (and one which previously posted bigger numbers in 2017), and the other a sequel to a 2018 movie that felt fresh in its own right.

Meanwhile, long-in-the-tooth franchise entries like Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One fell below studio expectations, with Indy being particularly singled out as a flop given its staggering $295 million budget (which is a shame, I personally liked it). Warner Bros. put their entire weight behind The Flash, a superhero movie that cost anywhere between $200 million and nearly $300 million, depending on who you ask—far above what WB spent on Barbie—and was hyped to the press as the studio’s best superhero movie since Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight. That movie crashed and burned with a catastrophic $55 million opening, even with the nostalgic hook of Michael Keaton returning as Batman in all the trailers.

Conversely, Chris Nolan’s actual new film this summer is a talky, gloomy, and intensely adult, R-rated three-hour epic about men sitting in rooms and pondering the end of the world. That film opened far bigger than The Flash/Batman 9.5, Indiana Jones 5, Mission: Impossible 7, Transformers 7, and Fast & Furious 10. Because, yes, even Vin Diesel’s Toretto Family is in decline with May’s Fast X opening at $67 million (far below either half of Barbenheimer). It then tapped out at $705 million worldwide, down a whopping 43 percent from The Fate of the Furious’ $1.2 billion gross just two installments ago.

This weekend should sound like the penny dropping. Audiences want new things, and they especially respond to them if they’re done well. And both Barbie and Oppenheimer proved to be home runs with a wide range of people, each garnering the coveted “A” CinemaScore from polled ticket-buyers.