pop culture

'Barbie' vs 'Oppenheimer': Who Won the Battle?

Who's bringing in the most so far?

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Universal Pictures, Warner Bros. Pics

Published Jul 21, 2023

They're calling it..."Barbenheimer." How exactly we got here, we don't know. What we do know, however, is that Barbie and Oppenheimer, the two most anticipated blockbusters of this summer, have released on the same day, making this one of the most memorable box office battles in recent years. We have to admit that this is all kind of strange when you think about it as Barbie (the live-action movie about a doll), and Oppenheimer (a biopic chronicling the career of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer) are two very different films that really shouldn't be competing with another at all, but here we are.

Universal

The biggest question ahead of this weekend is which film is going to have the biggest opening weekend and walk away with the most box office revenue when it's all said and done. Obviously, we won't have the final numbers for this weekend until Monday, and it's going to take a while before we can make a determination as to who brought in the most, so we'll have to make updates as we get more info.

Here's what we know though.

Warner Bros. Pictures

While Oppenheimer has received better reviews from critics and has a higher ranking thus far, according to Independent, Barbie is set to out earn Oppenheimer by a pretty big margin as Barbie is projected to earn $110m at the US box office, whilst Oppenheimer is set to bring in $50 million.

Also, according to a breaking news article just published by Deadline, Warner Bros. just made it official that Barbie has collected the best previews of not only this summer, but of 2023 YTD with $22.3M. The previous record was held by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, which brought in $17.5M. Deadline also states that Barbie’s revenue thus far includes the $1.1M from Wednesday previews at 500 locations, and that the Thursday previews were booked at 3,400 locations.

It's possible that Oppenheimer could see bigger numbers during weekend number two as the Barbie hype might down since the majority are going out this weekend to see it. Also, a two-movie weekend is a lot for some folks, so there may be some who are going to opt for Barbie this weekend, and plan on catching Oppenheimer sometime next week.

Even with that being said, it still might be hard for Oppenheimer to play catch up with Barbie having such a big opener. We'll have to see though. As we said, we'll be updating this article in the days and weeks to come to see what the final numbers are.