Maxance Vincent
Barbie has officially crossed the billion-dollar mark, making it the second film to pass this number this year, after The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Moreover, the movie becomes the first solo female directorial effort to reach $1 billion at the box office, reaching this milestone 17 days after its initial release. Christopher Nolan‘s Oppenheimer is also holding out well and has crossed the $500 million mark this weekend. I doubt the latter film will reach $1 billion, but the two have broken several box office records in the Barbenheimer battle. However, the two films only helped themselves reach the records they set during this time.
Barbie remains the top film of the weekend, while Oppenheimer fell to third place for the first time since its release. Greta Gerwig‘s movie has grossed $53 million this week, while Nolan’s Oppenheimer came in with a $28 million tally. It’s safe to say that the hype for Barbenheimer is slowly dying down, but none of those films are dropping precipitously.
Several new movies came out this week, with Ben Wheatley‘s Meg 2: The Trench being the weekend’s biggest winner. While the film had a meager $30 million opening in North America, it grossed over $112 million internationally, giving it a worldwide cume of $142 million. I wouldn’t be surprised that another sequel gets greenlighted, even if reviews for this one were worse than the 2018 original. The movie benefited from the star power of Jason Statham and Wu Jing to appeal to a broader audience, particularly in China. Jing’s films Wolf Warrior 2 and The Wandering Earth 2 are two of the highest-grossing Chinese blockbusters ever.
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem did do relatively well in a crowded marketplace, grossing $28 million domestically, with a total of $51.5 million worldwide. With a budget of $70 million, Paramount played their cards right with this one, and the reviews are excellent. It’ll likely hold up over the next few weeks as studios usually dump films they don’t believe in during the month of August. The paradigm shifted for January, but August has remained consistent, even in a post-COVID world.
Here is the top ten films of the weekend:
- Barbie (Warner Bros): $53M (-43%) – 4,178 theatres
- Meg 2: The Trench (Warner Bros): $30M – 3,503 theatres
- Oppenheimer (Universal): $28.7M (-38.6%) – 3,612 theatres
- Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem (Paramount): $28.0M – 3,858 theatres
- Haunted Mansion (Disney): $8.9M (-62.7%) – 3,740 theatres
- Sound of Freedom (Angel Studios): $7.0M (-45.1%) – 2,975 theatres
- Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning – Part One (Paramount): $6.4M (-39.3%) – 2,370 theatres
- Talk to Me (A24): $6.2M (-39.9%) – 2,370 theatres
- Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny (Disney): $1.5M (-61.7%) – 1,190 theatres
- Elemental (Disney): $1.2M (-65.1%) – 1,160 theatres
Source: Box Office Mojo
It cannot be overstated just how much clout Greta Gerwig has attained with this milestone.
When these strikes are over, she will be able to walk into any studio (except maybe Disney, but it’s not like she needs them at this point), pitch them a project, and they will be 99.99% guaranteed to respond with “Yeah, sure, we’re in, how many zeroes do you need us to write on this check?”