The American box office this weekend is witnessing a remarkable contradiction in its leadership, as one of the two films that is expected to rank at the top of the ranking deals with a famous doll, while the other centers on the story of the inventor of the atomic bomb.
Since Friday morning, hundreds of thousands of movie lovers in North America have come to cinemas to see “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”.
Premiere figures in the US and Canada showed that this weekend’s revenues will be among the highest the industry has achieved this year.
The feature film about the most popular doll has so far earned more than $22 million, while the story of the first nuclear weapon has grossed $10.5 million, according to Box Office Pro.
And it is possible that the revenues of “Barbie” at the end of the weekend will reach about 150 million dollars, thus exceeding what the second part of “Avatar” achieved last December.
“The expectations are very high, and therefore the issue is not whether the two films will be successful, but rather the size of this success,” Daniel Loria, managing editor of “Box Office Pro” told AFP.
Even more than 200,000 viewers plan to see the two films in a row before the end of the weekend, according to the National Association of Cinema Owners.
The simultaneous screening of the two major films was the inspiration for a wave of jokes and comments on social networks. Some imagined, for example, the scenario of changing their clothes when moving from one to the other, while a group of derivative products expressing this approach appeared, dubbed “Barbenheimer”, which mixes the titles of the two films.
“Barbie’s online communication strategy has spread like wildfire, captivating a whole generation as well as a female audience that doesn’t usually value enough,” noted Sean Robbins, senior analyst at Box Office Pro, while director Christopher Nolan appeals to his own loyal audience.
The expert added, in a statement to Agence France-Presse, that the two republics “mixed in an unexpected way that shortens popular culture, through the Barpenheimer phenomenon.”
Robbins believed that this influence may have “enhanced interest in the two films together, as none of them would have reached that alone, had they been presented on two different dates.”
Franchise Entertainment Research analyst David A. Gross believes that the synchronization of the two films will not lead to their competition, but rather will benefit each other by arousing the desire of moviegoers.
Gross confirmed that he did not remember a “similar phenomenon” occurring previously.
“Oppenheimer is more for men and the elderly, while Barbie is more for women and the younger, but he saw that everyone could go to the cinemas to see both,” he said.
“The movie theater was full at 10:30 this morning, it was like crazy,” said Eric Adams, 27, in New York, explaining that he would go to see Barbie in the evening because tickets were not available at other usual times.
In Colorado, Emma McNeely, 35, said she would have preferred to watch “Oppenheimer” from home via streaming, but what was going on around her about “Barpenheimer” prompted her to return to the big screen.
As for Hollywood, it also participates in nurturing this phenomenon, despite the continuation of the double strike carried out by screenwriters and actors.
The star Tom Cruise, who plays the title role in a new part of “Mission Impossible”, expressed via Twitter his enthusiasm for the two films. In turn, “Barbie” director Greta Gerwig and the film’s heroine Margot Robbie showed up with two tickets to the Tom Cruise movie.
