Fans are officially riding the Barbie wave as the movie hits theatres this weekend. While the movie faces strong competition from Oppenheimer, the Barbenheimer mania has gripped the audience and the double feature makes it a sure win for the movie business. Both the movies have crushed the early projections and enjoyed massive box office success. While the Cillian Murphy-led sci-fi period drama garnered $174 million globally, the Margot Robbie-led feature emerged as the clear winner with a total of $337M globally and setting a plethora of records in its opening weekend.
Barbie Came and She Conquered
Barbie has been long in making, and while there are numerous animated movies, Robbie’s version is the first live-action movie ever. The movie was first conceived in 2009 by Universal to no avail then Sony got the rights and began development in 2014, but that project did not pan out either. Finally, in 2018, Warner Bros landed the rights for the movie. Robbie would then join the project in 2019, while Greta Gerwig was announced as director and co-writer with Noah Baumbach in 2021.
Per a new report in Deadline, this weekend, the movie became the highest domestic opening of the year to date, surpassing The Super Mario Bros‘ $146.4 opening weekend; it also dethroned The Super Mario Bros for the largest grossing day of 2023 with $70.8 million to Mario’s $54.8 million. Warner Bros Discovery, which has been desperate for a box office win after the failure of major DC titles like The Flash, Shazam 2 and Black Adam, saw the largest advance sales ever with Barbie at $49.5M. It also became the studio’s largest non-sequel, non-DC opening, a place formerly claimed by It.
The movie is also Ryan Gosling, Robbie, and Gerwig’s largest domestic and overseas opening as actors and director, respectively, and has marked the second-highest opening weekend for a female filmmaker, putting the movie next to Captain Marvel which saw a $456.6M global start. But Barbie did deliver the highest opening weekend for female director domestically. It also marked the largest opening for a toy-based movie.
By contrast, Oppenheimer marks Christopher Nolan’s third-highest-grossing opening weekend ever after The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, and highest-grossing opening weekend for an R-rated film beating this year’s John Wick: Chapter 4. The movie also outperformed Bohemian Rhapsody to enjoy the biggest global opening weekend for a biopic and the biggest global opening for a drama since 2019. And the movie saw Nolan’s third biggest international box office opening as well as became his biggest IMAX opening.
The success of both features only go on to prove that when creators are in complete control of their work, the movies are certain to find their audience. Further making the WGA and SAG AFTRA strikes more important than ever.
Barbie and Oppenheimer are in theatres now. You can check out our conversation with Gerwig below:
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