Battle at the Box Office 8/7/23

Barbie continued its utter dominance of the domestic and global box office this past weekend but its partner Oppenheimer was defeated by Meg 2: The Trench, which took the second place spot.

Barbie took in another $53 million, bringing its domestic total to $459.3 million and it has crossed over $1 billion worldwide.  If it can make another $357 million or so, it will take down The Super Mario Bros. Movie as the biggest movie globally for 2023.  Domestically, Barbie is tracking ahead of The Super Mario Bros. Movie on a daily basis, so it will almost certainly outpace Illumination’s hit in that market but we’ll have to see how strong it remains both here and internationally.  Barbie had the 11th biggest third weekend of all time domestically.

Meg 2: The Trench opened to second place with $30.1 million.  That is below the opening of The Meg, which opened to $45.4 million back in 2018.  Both Meg movies were always more international bets, especially in China, which co-funded both movies, and it made $53.7 million in China and a worldwide total so far of $142.1 million.  It’s the sixth-best opening for Jason Statham between the first Expendables movie and Spy.

Oppenheimer dropped to third with another $28.6 million, bringing it to $228.5 million domestically and $556.1 million worldwide.  It’s currently Christopher Nolan’s fourth biggest movie domestically and his fifth biggest worldwide.  It needs another $64 to pass Inception domestically and $91 million worldwide to pass Interstellar.

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem opened to fourth place for the weekend, although it opened on Wednesday last week.  It made $28 million for the weekend and $43 million total domestically so far and $51.5 million worldwide. Haunted Mansion dropped to fifth place, dropping 63% from last week’s opening and making another $8.9 million.  In its first five days, Turtles has outgrossed two weeks of Haunted Mansion.

Further, down the list, Talk to Me dropped 40% in its second weekend, which is excellent for a horror movie, and made another $6.2 million, bringing its domestic total to $22.1 million.

The Per Theater average went to Passages, which took in $21,092 in each of the three theaters it was playing in over the weekend.