Battle at the Box Office 7/24/23
Barbenheimer lived up to the hype, delivering one of the biggest box office weekends of all time and the biggest weekend since Avengers: Endgame debuted.
Barbie wound up on top of the charts with a massive $162 million opening. That’s bigger than The Super Mario Bros. Movie earlier this year, which opened to $146 million and it’s already the seventh biggest movie domestically in 2023 after only one weekend. Worldwide, Barbie has made over $356 million and is the 14th biggest movie of the year, but if it keeps up its performance, it will rocket up that chart in no time. Barbie and Greta Gerwig also had the biggest opening ever for a movie directed by a woman. The total box office for all movies in theaters this past weekend was $310,856,155. It was probably a huge relief for Margot Robbie, who despite being a bona fide movie star was in two of the biggest bombs of last year, Babylon and Amsterdam, and it was her biggest opening as a lead of all time, ahead of Suicide Squad.
Oppenheimer, while not as massive as its box office partner, was still huge as well with a second-place debut of $82.4 million, which is Christopher Nolan’s best non-Batman opening weekend. The Dark Knight Rises is Nolan’s best opening, doubling what Oppenheimer made with a $160.8 million debut in 2012. Worldwide, Oppenheimer had a total so far of $180.4 million. Both movies got an A CinemaScore, which means they should have excellent word of mouth and continue to perform extremely well in the next few weeks.
Sound of Freedom also continues to be a box office phenomenon, making another $19.8 million and taking third place. The movie now has a domestic box office total of $124.4 million and is by far the biggest movie ever for Angel Studios. It’s currently the 13th biggest movie domestically and it has the potential to surpass movies like Elemental and Fast X and make it into the top 10.
One movie not feeling the Barbenheimer love was Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which had the biggest 2nd-weekend drop in the M: I franchise, down 64% from last weekend’s opening. Dead Reckoning Part One made another $19.5 million, which brings it to $118.7 million domestically and $370.8 million worldwide. The big thing that hurt Dead Reckoning this weekend was that it lost all of its premium screens to Oppenheimer, as IMAX defers to Christopher Nolan.
Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny rounded out the top 5 with $6.6 million, bringing it to $158.9 million domestically and $334.9 million worldwide. It’s most likely going to go down as the lowest-grossing Indiana Jones movie in the franchise domestically, unadjusted or adjusted for inflation and only beating Temple of Doom worldwide.
Barbie also took the Per Theater average over the weekend, making $38,186 in each of the 4,243 theaters it was playing in over the weekend. Oppenheimer was in second place with $22,841 in each of the 3,610 theaters it was playing in.