The theater event being hailed as Barbenheimer is going to be analyzed for years. Savor and remember this moment.
What just started as a petty rivalry between two movies (in 2020 after Christopher Nolan quit Warner Brothers and moved to Universal, WB reacted by placing their film Barbie on the SAME date as Nolan’s next film Oppenheimer), has now become a mutually beneficial phenomenon.
Opening the weekend of July 21st, Barbie opened to $162 million and Oppenheimer opened to $82.4 million. There’s a movie for everybody with these two films.
Posttrak is reporting 68% of Barbie’s audience was female, while 65% of Oppenheimer’s audience was male. You can imagine a couple going to the theater, kissing each other goodbye, walking into different theaters, and both coming out with a smile.
Many theatergoers aren’t making a choice, they’re seeing both. When I and a friend saw both films last Friday, we were in a sea of others dressed their best, either in pink, suits, or science related outfits at the AMC.
It was like gathering to witness a rare cosmic event.
This is particularly hopeful, as it shows that even post COVID, there can be event movies that get everyone talking and excited enough to make the visit to the multiplex. The question is – why are they getting off their couches? I‘ve got 2 key thoughts:
1. Unique Subject Matter, with Clever Execution
The buzz around both movies shows audiences are hungry for new stories that aren’t just 5th or 7th entries in a franchise (looking at you, Indiana Jones, Mission Impossible, Transformers), or formulaic stories (e.g. every superhero story right now).
Sure Barbie is an existing IP, but unlike The Super Mario Bros Movie – which follows the plot of a beloved game – there’s a blank canvas for creating a story.
Interest ended up being so high for Barbie, that it beat The Super Mario Bros Movie for the BIGGEST opening weekend of the year, $162 million to $146 million respectfully.
Just like with The Lego Movie, many audience goers want to see Barbie out of both nostalgia and curiosity. The marketing reflected the playfulness, opening the film up as something both kids and adults could proudly enjoy.
With Barbie, women are showing up in droves, but (plot twist notwithstanding) it’s okay to be a guy in the audience, too.
The story is layered, both entertaining and satirical, poking fun at the Barbie mythos in subversive and clever ways that empower women and offer a nice viewpoint on modern day feminism.
Similarly, the story and subject matter are massive key selling points for Oppenheimer.
The interesting thing about Oppenheimer is that everyone knows how it ends (spoiler alert – we make an atomic bomb), but The Manhattan Project is one of those mysterious events that EVERYONE knows about superficially, but not the details.
Even at 3 hours and a dour tone, with mostly talking and little action, the storytelling is thrilling, riveting, and intense in a very non-History-Channel way.
By the end of the movie, the audience has a deeper appreciation not just for J. Robert Oppenheimer, but for all the people who came together to create this dreadful weapon.
Barbie takes a well known toy, and tells a smart engaging story that feels fresh. Oppenheimer takes a well known event, and gives you a peek behind the curtain of “the most important man who ever lived, who genuinely created the power to destroy the world”.
Both Barbie and Oppenheimer are stories that people don’t know and find intriguing – and somehow feel important enough to find out about ASAP.
2. Huge fanbase for the Director/Cast
Oppenheimer’s massive opening shows Director Christopher Nolan is still in his prime. He’s the modern equivalent of Spielberg and Scorsese, a director whose involvement on a project guarantees some semblance of quality and commercial success.
His last film Tenet managed to gross over $360m worldwide in 2020 during the peak of the pandemic, almost entirely off Nolan’s name alone.
And now with a remarkable $82.4 million debut, Oppenheimer is a career best for Nolan opening a non-Batman movie.
With Barbie, they casted the film perfectly. The likability of both Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in the main roles is a big reason why the anticipation is so high.
Greta Gerwig is also likely a draw as writer/director of Barbie. For a significant portion of the audience, she is an “it” director after making both Lady Bird and Little Women, she’s a trusted voice in directing female-driven movies.
Both Barbie and Oppenheimer will likely have wonderful staying power for the rest of the summer. Both films are completely satisfying for audiences (“A” Cinemascores for both).
Yet each has fast paced stories, where a lot of details could be missed during the first watch, that I suspect repeat viewing for both will be big.
For Barbie, imagine $500 million just in the U.S. plus more than $1 billion worldwide. For Oppenheimer, imagine $700-$800 million worldwide, one of the biggest biopics ever made.
And with the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes going on, both Barbie and Oppenheimer may also be the last big budget hit films for the rest of the summer, if not the year.
I really hope the insane success of Oppenheimer thus far emboldens Paramount to go all out on pushing and marketing Scorsese’s Killers of the Flower Moon this fall – another 3 hour epic, with major stars, a marquee director, but most of all an important subject matter.
My hope from the massive successes of Barbie and Oppenheimer is that conventional wisdom of what a blockbuster can also be is rethought. Maybe there is a way to re-engage that portion of the public who swore off theaters for the comfort of their couch.
Yes – core movie-going audiences will still see franchise and formulaic movies – but clever, thoughtful stories done well can be BIG blockbusters too, and can be worth taking a chance on.
Zan Hollywood Box Office - Analysis Site 
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