Last week saw an absolute explosion at the box office with the releases of Barbie and Oppenheimer. The kind of success that Hollywood hasn’t seen in 2023 aside from The Super Mario Bros. Movie. As we speak, Barbie has already made over 472 million dollars worldwide while Oppenheimer is at 231 million dollars. This of course was record breaking for both feature films. For Barbie, it was one of the highest grossing opening weekends in the history for Warner Bros along with the fourth biggest opening week in domestic box office history- just under Star Wars: The Force Awakens, Avengers: Infinity War, and Avengers: Endgame. For Oppenheimer, it was the biggest opening for a Christopher Nolan film outside his Batman films along with the highest opening for an R-rated film since Joker. As much as it must’ve been hard for both studios to stay pat with their decision to released both of these highly anticipated films in the same weekend, it seemed to have paid off big time.
If you’ve been following the film industry and entertainment business right now, you probably know that things are not looking well in Hollywood at all. The strike between the writers and actors is still occurring which doesn’t look like it’s gonna get resolved anytime soon, so much so that films are likely looking to get pushed back because of it. This has also been a summer that despite releasing the most “big” films since 2019, has not fared well for theaters and the box office for Hollywood. Big anticipated blockbusters such as The Flash, Transformers: Rise of the Beasts, and Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny were not able to make their money back whatsoever. Even the number of films that did make money at the box office such as Fast X and The Little Mermaid was still view as a disappointment due to how much both of those films cost to make. While the jury is still out on the likes of Elemental (which still has legs) and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning- Part 1 (which hopefully will still have legs), they were in desperate need of a guaranteed box office smash this summer that didn’t involve Marvel superheroes. And they finally got it!
To say that last weekend was important for cinema would be a massive understatement. This likely has been the first time that theaters seem to have brought a massive amount of audience to the theaters at once since Top Gun: Maverick. When seeing both of these films, I can’t remember the last time I’ve seen a theater so packed with tons of people exciting to see whatever film they were looking forward to seeing. It’s the kind of weekends that I remember with most big summer blockbusters releases before the pandemic hit. It was the kind of weekend that once again reminded everyone the importance of the movie theater going experience.
The big ringing question that I assume everyone has on their minds is that how did this happened? How were both of these films that had an insane amount of hype be able to meet and even surpass expectations at the same time where plenty others flicks this summer had failed? While I’m sure everyone has their own personal solutions, I think the answers is fairly obvious, there was a little bit of movies for everyone this week.
Regardless what your own personal thoughts on both of these films were, they had clear target demographics in mind that was able to appeal to both men and women worldwide. With Barbie, it was able to deliver the big budget flick that multiple generations of kids and those that grew up with the Barbie brand were finally given the chance to see. With Oppenheimer, it was able to deliver the R-rated biopic that adults and fans of Christopher Nolan were dying to see. And while these were far from “original” films, they felt like a refreshing change of pace over a year that been filled with interchangeable superhero flicks and franchises brand that have lost their appeal. These were just too good of flicks to just wait another few months for it become available through digital or streaming services to witness the experience. These had to be seen on the big screen because that was what these films were made for.
Of course, there are other elements you can mention as well, most notably the stellar marketing on both ends. Barbie was able to perfectly spoof all-time classics with the marketing along with showcasing trailers that actually didn’t show the whole movie for once but enough to get people interested. Oppenheimer was able to let people know of it’s existence ahead of time by starting it’s advertising campaign a year in advance and building upon on it until the film’s release, so much so that there was even an account on YouTube that literally had the trailer playing on loop for an eternity until the film actually came out. These were the kind of marketing you don’t get nowadays and was the kind of marketing I imagine most people missed with films. It was the kind of marketing that made you actually want to see the film instead of making you feel like you’ve already seen the film.
Above all, I think the think that sets Barbenheimer up top compare to many of the other big movies post-Covid is that it felt like an event. An event that is more satisfying to watch on the biggest screen possible rather than the comfort of your own homes. Just like with the other billion dollar grossers in the past three years with Spider-Man: No Way Home, Top Gun: Maverick, and The Super Mario Bros Movie, these were simply can’t miss theater experiences. While a big part of that has to do with it being based off of a familiar property or a classic that many people loved, they were all distinct and different enough to where many people thought it was worth spending some hard earned cash to watch in a comfy theater when they released so they can watch it before their very eyes along with everyone else. That is something that most movies in the 2020s have several lacked but when the exceptions have come around, they’ve come around hard and proved their worth.
While no one is gonna suggest the right proper way to go about the success of Barbenheimer is to do one of these events every weekend, I think the lesson to learn here is for Hollywood to know their audience. Know deep down which kinds of movies and franchise installments that folks will actually want to see and not ones that they personally want to see happen. While more fun and competitive opening weekends are intriguing in their own right, this should not be the key for success for every big blockbuster going forward. We don’t need ten more Barbie sequels or five more R-rated biopics, what we need are a variety of films that feel fresh, unique, entertaining, and helps enhance the theater going experience. It’s then that perhaps we might see Barbenheimer as being a turning point for the future of cinema.
With the ways things are going on right now in Hollywood, Barbenheimer simply could not have come out in a better place at a better time. In a time where the strike with the actors, writers, and studios are at war with each other and where the summer movie season has been cooking up bomb after bomb, we needed a event like this to remind ourselves why movie theaters are important and why they are still worth keeping around even with digital and streaming services on the rise. While I highly doubt Hollywood will take the right lesson from this in the future, the fact that something like this was able to happen without it simply coming across as a forced meme is simply a miracle. And I could only hope we see a similar outcome in a few months when Saw X and Paw Patrol: The Mighty Movie come out during the same weekend.
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