The Hollywood Showdown of Summer 2023: Barbie vs. Oppenheimer, Nolan vs. Universal

Mark the date: July 21, 2023. Because in the cinemas of the United States it will be a clash of titans. Model Godzilla against King Kong to battle to the last ticket will be none other than the “auteur” blockbusters of the summer: Barbie Of Greta Gerwig con Margot Robbie e Oppenheimer Of Christopher Nolan con Cillian Murphy. And this time there does not seem to be any coincidence, on the contrary there is a full-blown war with very heated tones complete with a third wheel.

The protagonists are the producers/distributors Warner bros Discovery on Barbie’s side and Universal from that of Oppenheimer. Well, the PuckNews site, recently founded by former editors of Hollywood Reporter, spoke bluntly of Barbie as a “middle finger” trimmed (or stuck, you name it) by Warner to Mr. Nolan, then to Universal. It is known that the director of Batman Begins he argued so much with Warner during the months of the Covid pandemic until he separated. We are talking about a partnership that lasted since 2002 when the promising Nolan (up to then author of Following and Memento) was launched with the splendid Insomnia con Al Pacino and the late Robin Williams right from Warner making him one of the ten most important directors in Hollywood. In short, a relationship of mutual trust that lasted almost twenty years and ended daringly in mid-December 2020 when Ann Sarnoff, president and CEO of WarnerMedia Studios, declared that Warner in 2021 would distribute its flagship titles simultaneously in theaters and in streaming with HBO Max Nolan’s reaction was quite ferocious, as well as lucid and articulate: “Some of the greatest directors in our industry and among the most important movie stars went to bed on the evening of December 3 thinking they were working for the largest motion picture studio in the world.” world and woke up the next day to find they were working for the worst streaming service.” And again: “Warner Bros. had an incredible machine to take a director’s work everywhere, both to the cinema and to the home, and they are dismantling it as we speak”.

Moral of the story: Tenet, Nolan’s latest film released in theaters at the end of summer 2020 when the Covid pandemic was believed to have ended – we recall that Tenet has collected 359 million dollars in receipts worldwide – it was also the last produced and distributed by Warner . So with his project on the physique Oppenheimer Nolan has, as it were, put himself on the market and it was Universal who responded by financing the film with a budget of over 100 million dollars. It therefore does not seem a coincidence that Warner has finally chosen to launch its authorial blockbuster no less than the same day, July 21, in which its former protégé with the golden eggs will release his latest effort with the new major. Also Barbie, moreover, it is a production costing approximately as much as that of Oppenheimer around 100 million. Analysts are already estimating that Gerwig’s film will surpass Nolan’s in box office. To lean in favor of Barbie would be two factors: the universally recognized brand of the Mattel doll that underlies the vaguely kitsch operation of the New York director and the R classification for Oppenheimer – children under 17 enter only if accompanied – which cuts out a large slice of teenagers from the theater (it is the first Nolan film since Insomnia to be R-rated).

Finally, speaking of close releases, the controversy over the same release date for Warner and Universal products has also been joined by another big star who has asked to “go further” to the titles mentioned. It is still Puck News to report, without being denied yet, that Tom Cruise complained a lot about the fact that Mission Impossibile: Dead Reckoning part onethe new chapter of the saga dear to him and played by him will be released only seven days earlier than Oppenheimer. Cruise seems to be very angry with the executives of Paramount – who produces the film – on how Nolan’s Oppenheimer will take all the IMAX screens in North America (about twenty) and in other territories (from the Imax.com site there are another twenty theaters in Canada, Great Britain and the western half) for three weeks after its release. That means fans hoping to catch the new Mission: Impossible film have just nine days to see it in IMAX 70mm before every theater supplying this spectacular format is taken over by Nolan’s historic epic. A not negligible detail: the Italian rooms, notoriously empty in the summer, will host Oppenheimer only a month later. In fact, the Italian release is scheduled for August 23, 2023.