'Barbenheimer' arrives as moviegoers flock to a Mattel-mushroom cloud double feature
Entertainment
‘Barbenheimer’ arrives as moviegoers flock to a Mattel-mushroom cloud double feature
NEW YORK (AP) — Waves of pink-clad moviegoers passed under cardboard palm trees on the frenzied first day of “Barbenheimer.”
After a feverish drumbeat propelled forward by a mushroom cloud of memes, the most anticipated day on the year’s movie calendar finally arrived as “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” — two movie opposites brought together by cross-marketing fate — landed in theaters.
“I think it’s the contrast,” said Lucy Ruiz, 17, as she and a friend made their way into the first showing of “Barbie” on Thursday at the Alamo Drafthouse in Yonkers, New York. “If you want to do both in the same day, it’s like two sides of the same coin.”
For Ruiz, the second half of her “Barbenheimer” would have to wait. “Maybe next week,” she said of seeing “Oppenheimer.”
But many are flocking to see both on opening weekend. The National Association of Theater Owners says some 200,000 moviegoers in North America have booked same-day tickets to each movie. The movie of the summer has turned out to be not “Indiana Jones” or “The Flash,” but a double feature.
“I don’t think I’ve seen anything like this,” says Michael O’Leary, president of the theater association, who compared the phenomenon to a sold-out Taylor Swift concert tour. “But while that’s an amazing special event that captures the cultural attention, it’s not accessible to everybody the way these two movies are. This is a phenomenon open to everyone, regardless of where they live.”
As of Friday, it was already clear “Barbenheimer” had morphed into the movie event of the year. The collision of Greta Gerwig’s bright satire of the Mattel doll and Christopher Nolan’s three-hour opus on J. Robert Oppenheimer, the so-called father of the atomic bomb, wasn’t cannibalizing ticket sales for either but fueling excitement for the most jarring and color-clashing of movie weekends.
Studios forecasts had hovered around an $80 million opening weekend for “Barbie” and about $40 million for “Oppenheimer.” But it’s likely that both will greatly exceed those totals, and maybe even — especially in the case of “Barbie” — double them.
Warner Bros. said Friday that “Barbie” took in $22.5 million in Thursday previews, the best such tally of the year and a clear sign that the film will easily sail past $100 million for the weekend. Universal Pictures’ “Oppenheimer” notched $10.5 million in preshow ticket sales, a likewise strong start.
