‘Barbenheimer’ frenzy gives sluggish summer box office a major boost

Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie in "Barbie." - Photo by Warner Bros. Pictures

LOS ANGELES, July 23 (Reuters) – The much-hyped “Barbenheimer” box office battle over the weekend proved to be a win for movie theaters that needed to add some sizzle to their summer.

Ticket sales for the film industry’s biggest season had been disappointing through much of June and July. “The Flash” flopped, a new “Indiana Jones” adventure underwhelmed, and Tom Cruise’s latest “Mission: Impossible” movie opened short of expectations. Hollywood also is grappling with strikes by writers and actors.

Enter “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” two polar opposite movies that debuted simultaneously in a matchup dubbed “Barbenheimer.”

“Barbie” stars Margot Robbie in a brightly colored comedy about the iconic doll, while “Oppenheimer,” tells a haunting story about the making of the atomic bomb.

The two titles had cinemas buzzing over the weekend and filled with “Barbie” fans dressed in pink. Domestic ticket sales for all movies topped $300 million in the United States and Canada for just the fourth time in history. “Barbie” hauled in $155 million of that and “Oppenheimer collected $80.5 million, according to studio estimates on Sunday.

“Everybody was in,” said Jeff Bock, senior box office analyst at Exhibitor Relations Co. “All demographics showed up for these two films, and it’s exactly what Hollywood needed.”

Cinema going still lags behind pre-pandemic levels, prompting nagging questions about whether audiences have grown content to watch movies at home.

Hopes were high going into the summer as COVID-clogged production pipelines cleared and studios scheduled 30% more films than last summer. But through mid-July, 2023 summer box office receipts were running about 7% below last year.

Now, summer domestic ticket sales stand roughly 1% ahead of the same point in 2022, research firm Comscore said, while year-to-date totals are up 16% from 2022.

Still, the $5.4 billion total so far this year ranks 19% behind the pre-pandemic times of 2019.

Over the weekend, “Barbie” set records as the biggest opening of 2023 and the highest of any movie directed by a woman in history. It eclipsed the April opening of “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.”

While Hollywood celebrated the bustling weekend, cinemas face a thinning slate ahead. The next big action movie on the schedule is November’s “Dune – Part 2.”

Plus, the ongoing work stoppages could delay some upcoming titles, and the industry still faces the reality that many 2023 movie releases fell flat.