The high-octane comedy “Barbie” has had the best start of the year in North American cinemas. She relegated the atomic bomb drama “Oppenheimer” to second place, as several US media reported.
The live-action adaptation, about a trip to real-life California by the famous toy doll and her boyfriend Ken, is estimated to have grossed about $155 million in the US and Canada as of Sunday.
Director Greta Gerwig (“Lady Bird”) has also landed the best start ever for a film directed by a woman, wrote the industry website “The Hollywood Reporter”.
“Oppenheimer” just behind “Barbie”
The historical drama about the physicist Robert Oppenheimer, who is considered the “father of the atomic bomb”, has earned around 80.5 million dollars. Because the film by Christopher Nolan (“Inception”, “Dunkirk”) with a running time of 180 minutes is longer than the 114-minute “Barbie”, the cinemas were able to schedule fewer performances.
“Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” and the child trafficker drama “Sound of Freedom”, which was controversial because of its proximity to conspiracy myths, followed with around 19 million dollars in ticket sales. According to Variety, it was the fourth best weekend in North American cinema history, not adjusting for inflation.
Writer and actor strike
For weeks, the studios had successfully fueled the hype for the double release of the two films: According to a survey by the US cinema owners’ association, more than 200,000 people saw the two films on the same day, also thanks to the very good reviews.
For the cinemas, these numbers are a relief in the midst of the scriptwriters and actors’ strike – the market mood also weighs on the fact that presumed hits like “Indiana Jones and the Wheel of Destiny”, “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” and the Pixar film “Elemental” have fallen far short of expectations.
Thanks to strong results also on foreign markets and budgets of around 145 million US dollars for “Barbie” and around 100 million dollars for “Oppenheimer”, both films should be highly profitable. In Germany, too, “Barbie” made it to number one in the cinema charts.
