The tidal wave that is Barbenheimer shows no signs of settling as both Barbie and Oppenheimer continue breaking records in epic second weekends. Both films ruled the box office once more this weekend, with the latter reaching yet another significant achievement.
Of the two, Barbie has dominated commercially, which was pretty much a given due to it appealing to a broader audience; Oppenheimer also came with an R rating, meaning it was far less family-friendly than its pink contemporary. Despite this limiting its audience to a degree, Oppenheimer has still been highly successful, raking in $180 million at the global box office on its opening weekend, a weekend that, between itself, Barbie, and other theatrical showings, become one of the biggest weekends for theater in history. Twenty percent of which came solely from IMAX showings, setting a new record for the big, big screen.
Variety reports that Oppenheimer‘s second weekend has been just as remarkable, adding another $46.6 million from 3,647 theaters, down 44 percent from its first opening weekend. Not bad at all for an R-rated film. Speaking of which, Universal has announced that it is the first R-rated film to take in more than $10 million a day for seven days in a row, now 10 counting the weekend. Oppenheimer beat out other famed R-rated film’s second weekend takings, such as Logan ($38.1M), Deadpool 2 ($43.4M), and even films released this year, such as John Wick: Chapter 4 ($28.3M). It could not take the top spot, though, which goes to It: Chapter One, taking in $60.1 million in its second weekend.
This gives Nolan’s historical biopic a whopping ongoing total of $174 million domestically and $400 million globally. This makes Oppenheimer one of Nolan’s most significant commercial successes, overtaking Tenet ($365 million) and Batman Begins ($373 million) in its first ten days. The success is also likely due to the sheer hype surrounding Oppenehiemer and Barbie‘s release date coinciding, leading to huge attention on social media sites dubbing the two Barbenheimer. Barbie took home another $93 million in its second weekend, adding to its total, standing at $774 million, the third highest-grossing film of the year so far.
Alongside the two giants, which have seen folks flock to the theater, is the release of the family-friendly Haunted Mansion, which debuted on July 28 and took $24.6 million from 3,700 theatres in North America. Not the best result for a kid-centric movie, but it was an odd choice to release a haunted film in the middle of summer and not closer to Halloween. One can only wonder why that decision was made.