“Barbenheimer” weekend at the movie theater is beating expectations, pushing estimated overall domestic box office sales for the three days to over $300 million, according to
Comscore
estimates on Sunday.
Warner Bros. Discovery
‘s (ticker: WBD) Barbie is estimated to have sold $155 million of tickets domestically, according to Comscore, while
Comcast
-owned (CMCSA) Universal’s Oppenheimer ticket sales reached $80.5 million.
The double premiere already was expected to draw big crowds of moviegoers, many of whom were going to watch one and then the other on the same day or at least during the same opening weekend.
The buzz meant presale estimates for Barbie were outpacing that of any other movie this year, according to Boxoffice Co.
The movie’s weekend sales also rank among the top five overall industry weekends domestically, according to Comscore. Barbie led the weekend, and total box office sales for the industry were the fourth-highest and the best since 2019.
The top box-office weekend was in 2019, when Avengers: Endgame‘s sales reached $357 million, according to Comscore, putting the industry’s gross over $400 million. The weekend in 2018 when Avengers: Infinity War hauled in $257.7 million is the second-highest in sales for the industry, and Star Wars: The Force Awakens‘ $247.9 million in 2015 is third. Disney distributed those three movies.
The weekend performance could come as a sigh of relief to Hollywood studios, which have been struggling to revive interest in summer moviegoing, typically a big season for action-packed blockbuster films. Tom Cruise’s Mission Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One came up short of expectations on its three-day weekend debut.
Other big-budget releases have also come up short.
Walt Disney
‘s (DIS) Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny, which cost about $295 million to make, has grossed $154 million in domestic box office sales since its June 30 premiere, according to Box Office Mojo.
So far this year, domestic box office sales have reached about $5 billion, according to Comscore. That’s 12% higher than last year but more than 20% below the sales reached in 2019.
A strike by actors and writers could derail future sales if Hollywood studios are shut down for long.
The simultaneous release of Barbie and Oppenheimer seems to have helped boost sales for both, as groups of young adults, many decked out in pink, flocked to theaters to see them. The National Association of Theatre Owners projected that more than 200,000 people in North America bought same-day double-feature tickets.
“Movies have once again confirmed their power to capture our cultural imagination,” said the industry group’s CEO Michael O’Leary.
The pair of movies couldn’t be more different, however. Barbie is a film about the classic doll brought to life to embark on a journey of self-discovery, while Oppenheimer depicts the group of scientists that designed and developed the atomic bomb in the mid-1940s.
EntTelligence estimates that 12.8 million people went to see Barbie, and 5.8 million flocked to see Oppenheimer, which it called a record opening for an R-rated flim.
Write to Liz Moyer at liz.moyer@barrons.com
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