Squinting through the pink glow of ‘Barbenheimer’
It was a phenomenal weekend at the box office. But look closer and it’s clear there are hurdles ahead.
The movie business has been through some wild mood swings since the COVID-19 pandemic, with the utter elation following the success of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” being the latest example, coming after what has been a rocky summer at the multiplex.
“It’s so over / We’re so back.” So goes the social media catchphrase-turnedmeme that captures the emotional journey of toggling between depression and mania, accompanying bad news on one extreme (a “Mission: Impossible” movie underperformed? It’s so over) and good news on the other (“Barbenheimer”! We’re so back).
Movie fans are on a major “We’re so back” high right now, and with good reason.
Warner Bros.’ “Barbie” opening this past weekend with a mind-blowing $162 million in the U.S. and Canada (even better than the studio’s preliminary estimate of $155 million), combined with Universal’s “Oppenheimer” debuting to $82.4 million, resulted in the fourth biggest domestic weekend ever, not adjusting for inflation.
Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie,” backed by an elaborate marketing campaign and the star power of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, scored the highest opening weekend for a film directed by a woman. The numbers for Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” are also staggering, especially given that it’s a talky, R-rated historical drama without a big-name star in the lead role — no offense to Cillian Murphy, who plays theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, and all the devotees of his show “Peaky Blinders.”
The Oscar buzz has begun. The stock price of Barbie doll-maker Mattel has climbed some 20% in the last month. People are going to the movies, with groups of friends dressed in bright pink.
“Barbenheimer” has lifted spirits at a precarious
moment for the movie business, with the writers’ and actors’ strikes shutting down production and hobbling publicity campaigns for upcoming releases.
“You can’t deny that the theatrical business and the industry in general have been needing a weekend like this all summer,” said Jeff Bock, senior analyst at Exhibitor Relations. “We’ve been waiting and waiting and waiting for something to break out and break loose, and it turned out to be this double feature.”
It’s tempting, amid the celebration, to draw sweeping lessons from Hollywood’s big wins.
Are audiences growing tired of established intellectual property? After movies, including “Fast X,” “The Flash,” “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” and “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One,” all disappointed to varying degrees, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” each represent something fresh.
It’s not enough to give people more of what they’ve seen before, the thinking goes. There’s some truth to that in the case of certain aging franchises, but the idea that studios are going to move away from sequels and reboots is far-fetched.
With both the weekend’s winners, the studios granted creative freedom to singular filmmakers and reaped the benefits. It also helps that neither cost anywhere near the $300-million budgets commanded by some of the summer’s priciest wannabe blockbusters.
And clearly, in the case of “Barbie,” there’s pent-up demand for a major non-Rrated “event movie” aimed primarily at young women, considering that the studios’ big bets this season have leaned heavily in the maleoriented action-adventure
genre. Something similar happened for “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” after a drought of family-friendly films.
None of these factors would matter much if the movies were bad.
Both have Rotten Tomatoes critic scores at least 90% “fresh.” That doesn’t mean that good movies will always succeed or that bad movies are doomed to fail, even in a world where people have more at-home entertainment options than ever, with TikTok and other apps. But it does indicate that
the margin for error has evaporated.
TD Cowen analyst Doug Creutz, in a Sunday note to clients, estimated that Hollywood’s recent weak performers would have done at least 20% better in a more forgiving pre-COVID-19 environment. “The lesson here is less about the success of non-franchise content and more about the success of great content (and worsening returns for mediocre content),” Creutz wrote.
But people should resist the desire to over-analyze. It’s not just that the movies
are good. It’s also that they are special in ways that Rotten Tomatoes data can’t capture. And the serendipity with which they have worked side by side to create a cultural sensation that no studio marketing team could manufacture.
There have been moments before when two very different movies have scored at the box office. Counterprogramming has been a traditional feature of the film business, with another Nolan drama serving as a prime example, when “The Dark Knight” opened opposite
the female-skewing musical “Mamma Mia!” Still, the memes surrounding the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon surely gave both films a need-to-see urgency. People want to be a part of it. There’s no easy way to replicate that feeling.
“From boomers to Gen Z, everyone is seeing both of these films, and that’s not something that anyone thought was going to happen,” Bock said.
Moreover, it’s unclear whether the industry will build momentum from last weekend’s explosion of
moviegoing. If audiences who’ve returned to theaters for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have a good time and want to come back, there still need to be films to look forward to in the next few weeks. Maybe Disney’s “Haunted Mansion” this Friday? Or “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and “Meg 2: The Trench” next week? Beyond that, the release schedule looks a little thin.
It remains to be seen whether the additional traffic to theaters will bring more attention to smaller movies, like the critically acclaimed A24 indie “Past Lives,” which has already grossed more than $10 million domestically.
With the actors’ and writers’ strikes still raging, and with neither the guilds nor the studios engaging in talks to resolve their contract disputes, it’s going to get worse.
Members of the performers’ union, SAG-AFTRA, won’t promote the studios’ upcoming releases, and having beautiful people talking about movies on TV is a huge part of any marketing campaign. Highly anticipated releases are already being pushed back.
Luca Guadagnino’s tennis movie “Challengers,” starring Zendaya and originally slated to premiere at the Venice International Film Festival on Aug. 30, now won’t hit theaters until late April. A movie like that is risky enough as it is, but without its star walking the red carpet, it’s probably dead on arrival. Too much of that kind of thing will deflate business in a way not seen since the pandemic shuttered theaters.
The movie industry won’t stop getting in its own way. It’s so over. We’re so back. Repeat.