Barbenheimer has become the movie meme of the summer. What could have been the ultimate girls vs. boys cage match has been reimagined as an invitation for girls, boys, and everybody else to come together for the good of the cinema.
Christopher Nolan’s WW2-era period drama about the man who created the atomic bomb, and Greta Gerwig’s comedy about the iconic Barbie doll are set to hit theaters on the same day, July 21. Online discussion around the films has been linked since it was announced that they would both be releasing on the same day. Now, even the filmmakers have gotten in on the fun, with Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning star Tom Cruise and director Christopher McQuarrie posing with their tickets for MI, Barbie, and Oppenheimer, which prompted Gerwig and Barbie star Margot Robbie to do the same. By the time you read this, Nolan and Cillian Murphy may have posed with their stubs, too.
After the past few years of an unstable box office, it seemed potentially dangerous for two big summer tent poles to open on the same day. But last week, early tracking results came in indicating that Barbie is on track for a $80-100 million opening, while Oppenheimer is on track for $40-50 million. That isn’t even taking into account that Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One will likely rake in around $35 million in its second weekend. Given that Barbie and Oppenheimer are both budgeted fairly modestly among this summer’s big movies at $100 million each, it looks like a good weekend for the health of the film industry, in large part because it represents the studios making a return to counterprogramming.
In film, counterprogramming is the act of distributors releasing multiple films aimed at different audiences in theaters at the same time. This is something we’ve seen less and less of in recent years. In a 2012 Slate article, writer Jim Pagels reflected on the start of the trend away from counterprogramming in response to the box office dominance of another Christopher Nolan film, The Dark Knight Rises. The trilogy capper opened unimpeded on July 20th, as rival studios avoided opening any new films the same weekend or too soon after.
Pagels notes that counterprogramming was still very common even a few years before, citing the example of Mamma Mia opening the same weekend as The Dark Knight. Both of those movies went on to find success, but a growing focus on first weekend grosses pushed studios to avoid opening big films on the same weekend.
We see a similar hesitance today when huge movies are hitting multiplexes. Everything made way for Avatar: The Way of Water last December; James Cameron’s sequel had no new competition during its opening weekend and trounced Babylon the next. It wasn’t until three weeks after its release that another movie had room to thrive, as M3GAN grew into a blockbuster entirely within Avatar’s shadow, taking in $179.9 million without ever topping the box office. A big hit now can be too much of a juggernaut to effectively be counterprogrammed against.
This summer has been so packed with new films that it can’t be entirely avoided. This past weekend we saw Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny open alongside Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, an animated movie aimed at kids. Similarly, The Flash opened against Elemental. None of those bets have really paid off, but it looks like Barbie and Oppenheimer will have the juice to reward both studios. Not equally, but for a three-hour-long R-rated drama about a scientist to even be in the same conversation as an IP-driven PG-13 comedy about the world's most popular doll is a feat in and of itself. Audiences seem to have recognized that Oppenheimer and Barbie aren't facing off against each other. Instead, they’re coming together for the movie event of the summer.