Two was better than one this weekend at the box office, and movie theaters are reaping the benefits.
"Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," two of the most highly anticipated films of the summer, both had excellent debuts at the domestic box office. The former, a comedy from Greta Gerwig based on the Mattel doll line, took in $155 million, the biggest three-day opening weekend of the year, according to Comscore. The latter, a Christopher Nolan film about the "father of the atomic bomb," also grossed $80.5 million, a hugely impressive start for a three-hour biopic driven largely by dialogue.
"Barbie" set a record for the biggest debut ever for a movie directed by a woman, while "Oppenheimer" delivered Nolan his biggest opening weekend other than his "Dark Knight" films. Both of these numbers exceeded expectations. When tallying up the grosses of all films playing in theaters, it was the fourth-biggest weekend in the history of the domestic box office and the biggest since the opening of "Avengers: Endgame" in 2019.
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While most of the other largest box office weekends were driven by a single event movie, this was an unusual situation where for many moviegoers, the event was two movies. "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer," two wildly different films, being scheduled to open on the same day spawned a phenomenon known as "Barbenheimer," where fans flocked to theaters to see them as a double feature. Though each film likely would have still succeeded alone, the combined package seems to have benefited them both.
This also came at a time when theaters needed a win, as the summer movie season has been filled with disappointments and underperformers; most recently, "Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One" fell a bit below expectations in its debut. The fact that "Barbenheimer" became a cultural phenomenon during a year when tentpole films like "The Flash" and "Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny" struggled raises the question of whether there's pent-up demand among audiences for different kinds of movies rather than new installments in established franchises. After all, though one is based on a doll and the other based on history, the marketing for "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" promised something truly unique in a season typically dominated by action and superheroes.
But the bad news for theaters is that with much of Hollywood currently shut down due to a pair of strikes and release date delays likely, "Barbenheimer" may be the last major movie event for a while.
