The “Barbenheimer” effect has taken its hold over the Australian box office, with the release of blockbuster movies Barbie and Oppenheimer breaking a slew of local cinema records across their first weekend.
The Greta Gerwig-directed Barbie movie has made $21.5m at the box office since the film opened on Wednesday night. It was the biggest opening weekend for a movie released in Australia in 2023, more than double the nearest rival, The Super Mario Bros Movie, which collected $10.5m in ticket sales.
Barbie was also the highest Australian opening for any movie directed by a woman; and the most successful debut for any movie starring Margot Robbie or Ryan Gosling.
Christopher Nolan’s historical epic Oppenheimer also overperformed with a robust $9.36m opening weekend. It’s the fourth-highest opening weekend for a 2023 movie, behind Barbie, Mario Bros and Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 3.
The three-hour biopic about J Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who spearheaded the creation of the nuclear bomb, achieved the highest opening weekend in Australia for a Nolan film. Its ticket sales were 26% higher than Inception and 56% more than Dunkirk.
The combined ticket sales of Barbie and Oppenheimer, along with holdover films including Mission: Impossible 7 and Indiana Jones 5, led to the highest ever Saturday and Sunday at the Australian box office – beating the previous record for a Saturday in April 2019, when Avengers: Endgame was released; and a record Sunday in December 2015, dominated by Star Wars: The Force Awakens.
Collectively, Barbie and Oppenheimer are shaping up to be a powerhouse attraction to entice film lovers back to the cinemas after moviegoing slumped during the Covid pandemic.
The ubiquity of the Barbie marketing campaign, coupled with the framing of Barbie and Oppenheimer – two movies very different in tone – as a double feature dubbed “Barbenheimer”, helped propel the success of both films.
Barbie and Oppenheimer’s opening weekend dwarfed projections in the US and Canada, where Barbie collected US$155m (A$230m) in ticket sales (compared to estimates of $70m to $80m) and Oppenheimer grossed US$80m (doubling expectations). Barbie’s American box office results also gives Gerwig the highest grossing opening weekend for a movie directed by a woman, toppling a record previously held by Captain Marvel’s co-director Anna Boden.
In the UK, Barbie became the biggest box office draw for cinema chain Vue since the pandemic. Rival chain Odeon reported on Thursday it had sold more than 200,000 advance tickets. The movie opened to £17.5m ($33.4m) – taking its total global earnings to US$337m since opening, while Oppenheimer grossed US$174.2m.
