BARBIE opening | OPPENHEIMER opening | Where we are now | July 21 to 23, 2023 weekend
Opening weekend box office, charts and commentary
The current weekend: July 21 to 23, 2023
1) Barbie opening
- This is a record-shattering opening. No comedic film of any kind has opened higher than $85.9m over a 3-day weekend. The numbers below include several different genres for comparison. Barbie is beyond compare:
Audience ratings and critics reviews are sensational. Overseas markets do not have the same history with Barbie that North America has, but this is a tidal wave and moviegoers everywhere are aware of the phenomenon. It's genuine excitement, not the manufactured kind. Moviegoers are making it their own.
- During the last two months, Barbie has exploded into a zeitgeist film. When audiences sit shoulder-to-shoulder and watch this movie, on some level, under the laughter, they’ll be looking for a personal connection. That's different from watching a special effects, action or horror film.
2) Oppenheimer opening
- This is a superb opening. The weekend figure towers over average for a big drama start. Setting aside Christopher Nolan's three Batman films, this is the writer/director’s biggest opening to date, by far (previously, Inception opened to $62.8m in July 2010). Critics reviews and audience scores are brilliant:
Barbie and Oppenheimer are complementing each other at the box office, not taking audience from each other. The market is capable of absorbing $230m+ of new business between them, particularly with two movies as different as these.
If preliminary industry reports are accurate that approx. 200,000 audience members bought tickets to both films as a double bill (it may turn out to be more later), then at a $12.50 avg ticket price, that piece of business would be between 2% and 2.5% of the two films’ total. Not a big portion of the BO, but absolutely priceless as a marketing hook.
3) Where we are now
- This is an unequivocally great weekend for moviegoing. Many of the summer’s high-profile sequels have stumbled, and the new stories have been subdued. Now, one week later, three movies are electrifying the market. This includes Sound of Freedom, which has done $19.7m, $27.3m, and an est. $20.1m during its first three domestic weekends — that’s fantastic.
The weekend is a reminder of the kind of cultural relevance movies can bring. Barbie is doing that. And over on the right side of the zeitgeist, audiences attending Sound of Freedom are bonding over the conspiracies they believe are darkening their lives, and how one white Christian man can fight back. That's its own kind of cultural relevance.
- For anyone planning on catching the Barbenheimer double bill, why stop there? Why not add a midnight show of Sound of Freedom and make it a Sound of Barbenheimer weekend? And if you find yourself loving all three of these films, then you either have very broad taste in movies, or you’re showing signs of multiple personality disorder, in which case, please consult with a mental health professional.
Next weekend we’ll have July domestic box office numbers. Moviegoing is getting a massive boost from a wave of fresh, original storytelling.