“Barbenheimer” is officially here, and the battle between Bomb and Bomb is about to set the box office on fire.
Greta Gerwig’s cotton candy-colored “Barbie,” starring Margot Robbie as the plastic, iconic doll, is expected to earn a whopping $95 million to $110 million from 4,200 North American theaters this weekend. Given the ubiquity of “Barbie” (the marketing is practically inescapable, enough memories and marketing ties to last a lifetime), first impressions are everywhere. Warner Bros. is budgeting a more conservative $75 million to open, while competitors and exhibitors believe the PG-13 film could make as much as $140 million between Friday and Sunday.
Either way, “Barbie” will be topped by Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb drama “Oppenheimer,” which is aiming to collect a solid $50 million from 3,600 theaters through Sunday. Universal backs the $100 million R-rated historical biopic.
“Oppenheimer” works in three hours (“Barbie” clocks just under two), which can limit the number of screenings per day. However, Nolan’s epic will benefit from premium large-format screens such as Emax, which will give its full footprint for three weeks.
Together, the seemingly disparate blockbusters with twin release dates are fueling the phenomenon known as “Barbenheimer.” AMC Theaters, the nation’s largest movie theater chain, reported that 40,000 people had already bought tickets for the same-day double feature of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — up 20,000 from last week.
Budgeted at $145 million, “Barbie” stars a slew of A-listers, but we’ll give you a few: Ryan Gosling, Issa Rae, Dua Lipa, Simu Liu, Helen Mirren, John Cena and Will Ferrell round out the cast. A fantasy comedy that follows Barbie and Ken as they emerge from the comforts and familiarity of Barbie-Land on their quest for self-discovery in the real world.
“Oppenheimer” is Nolan’s adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize-winning book “American Prometheus,” an equally-starring character study about theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Cillian Murphy stars as the man who led the development of the atomic bomb alongside Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh and Alden Ehrenreich.
The potent combination of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” as well as last weekend’s champ “Mission: Impossible – Deadly Count Part One,” is expected to fuel one of the biggest box office weekends of all time. Summer season produced several underperforming options such as “The Flash,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken.”
Tom Cruise’s new “Mission” is looking to add $28 million to $30 million in its second weekend, a roughly 50% drop from its debut. The seventh installment in Paramount and Skydance’s globe-trotting action franchise opened $56 million in North America and $234 million worldwide. It took in $291 million before the market, so Ethan Hunt’s latest death-defying adventure should remain a blockbuster all summer to justify that price tag.
Elsewhere, the unlikely box office hit “The Sound of Liberty” is soon to cross the $100 million mark, making the film one of the top 16 grossers of the year. The low-budget faith-based film about child sex trafficking has grossed an impressive $85.7 million to date. That credit goes to the religious and conservative media groups behind the film.
ComScore senior analyst Paul Dergarabedian calls the Barbenheimer “a movie marketer’s dream come true.” “Filmgoers are flooding multiplexes looking for movies to hit the big screen, creating a wave of interest that will boost the fortunes of ‘MI7’ and ‘Voice of Freedom’,” he added.
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