Say what you will about the many memes for the past four-plus months but ‘Barbenheimer’ worked.
In total, this was the fourth highest-grossing box office weekend of all time with more than $300 million across the entire box office. For context, the last time this record was made was the release of Avengers: Endgame. ‘Barbenheimer’ proved to be a natural event-driven moment in the cinema zeitgeist. Producing a water-cooler debate that neither Warner Bros. Discovery nor Universal could’ve planned for or anticipated.
Breaking The Patriarchy At The Box Office
Barbie did take the top spot this weekend with $155 Million as per Box Office Mojo. It’s not hard to see how Barbie outperformed Oppenheimer at the Box Office. It is a PG-13 movie that had a shorter run time. Shorter run times will always mean more screenings in a day, and subsequently more ticket sales.
Oppenheimer did well and outperformed expectations with $80.5 Million. Not only is it Christopher Nolan’s top-performing movie outside of The Dark Knight trilogy, but it’s also one of the top-performing R-rated biographical dramas.
The Outliers
Sound Of Freedom took the third-place spot; however despite an upward climb in previous weeks, this weekend the movie saw a 26% decrease over the previous weekend. However, with its disingenuous ‘Pay It Forward’ campaign, the end of the film encourages filmgoers to buy up tickets for others. There were many reports of empty screenings this weekend. Making its box office placement quite questionable. So take its success with a heavy grain of salt.
As was anticipated, Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One did take a hit in the box office revenue this weekend with a 64% drop over its opening weekend, with it only making $19.5 Million this past weekend in the fourth place spot.
Finally, Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny came in the fifth place spot, earning $6.7 Million.
This coming weekend sees the release of Disney’s Haunted Mansion movie. Which has not been seeing a lot of promotion amidst the current strikes going on in Hollywood. It’ll be interesting to see what kind of impact the movie will have without this major promotional push. As this will likely be an indicator to other studios of the impact of promotions on a movie’s box office success.
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