While the official weekend numbers won't be available until Monday, the opening weekend box office for both Barbie and Oppenheimer are astounding. As of Sunday, Great Gerwig's Barbie made $155 million in domestic ticket sales, and another $182 million in other countries. Chris Nolan's Oppenheimer made $80.5 million in the US and $93.7 million abroad. That's a combined total of $511 million on opening weekend. Yeah, it's the biggest opening weekend for film overall in a long time.
Although the two films are polar opposites, the hype leading up to them opening on the same weekend may have spurred more people to actually go to the theater. Some say that it helps that neither film is a prequel, sequel, or reboot of an existing movie series. Yes, audiences are hungering for something different, and it's rare that we get to see two movie that different in one weekend.
Both Barbie and Oppenheimer broke movie records. In fact, each broke an entire list of box office records, which you can read at Deadline.
(Image credit: Warner Bros./Universal)