The results are in, and just as everyone expected, Barbie and Oppenheimer have both completely and utterly annihilated the box office in their respective opening weekends.
While Greta Gerwig’s candy-colored caper had comfortably earned more money than Christopher Nolan’s biographical thriller, the latest chapter in the conflict has now pitted them head-to-head in an effort to see which one can break the most records.
As well as landing the highest-grossing opening weekend of 2023 with an estimated $155 million, Barbie is also the top-earning first frame for any movie directed by a woman, the biggest for any feature based on a toy, a new personal best for both Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and the largest haul of any debuting feature that isn’t a comic book adaptation, sequel, remake, or reboot.
Meanwhile, Oppenheimer scored the biggest weekend for any Christopher Nolan flick outside of the Dark Knight trilogy with $80.5 million, and the top-earning frame for an R-rated movie since Joker, with a worldwide tally of over $165 million blowing Bohemian Rhapsody out of the water as the heftiest three-day earnings accrued by any biopic ever made.
In short; it’s Barbenheimer‘s world and we’re all just living in it, and there will no doubt be countless more records to be smashed seeing as the double-bill that saved cinema has been playing on the big screen for all of three days.
Quite frankly, there’s no way of knowing how many landmarks are poised to tumble, but rest assured it’s going to be an awful lot seeing as the fever doesn’t show any signs of dying down at any point in the near future.