Box office preview: ‘Barbie’ looks to walk all over ‘Oppenheimer’ in savage summer feud

Edward Douglas
·6 min read
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Rumors about this weekend have been swirling around the internet for many months as something lovingly referred to as “Barbenheimer” – this Friday, that potential summer feud comes to a head. Read on for Gold Derby’s box office preview.

First up this weekend, opening in 4,100 theaters, is “Barbie,” based on the beloved Mattel dolls, directed by Greta Gerwig (“Little Women,” “Lady Bird”) from a screenplay she wrote with hubbie Noah Baumbach. Margot Robbie plays “Stereotypical Barbie” with Ryan Gosling as her counterpart Ken, although they’re only two of hundreds of diverse Barbies and Kens living in Barbie Land.

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This has a huge cast that includes Will Ferrell, America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Simu Liu, Kingsley Ben-Adir and Michael Cera, with cameos up the whazoo, but it’s also not a movie just made for kiddies as some might expect. It actually has some of the clever and wry humor that Gerwig and Baumbach have brought to their previous indie film collaborations. “Barbie” will definitely be seen as a test for Gerwig, whose first foray into studio films – aside from A24 releases – was her adaptation of “Little Women” for Sony in 2019, which was received well and grossed $108 million domestic after a $16.8 million opening.

More importantly, it should firmly cement Robbie’s role as an A-lister. She’s already been nominated for two Oscars, but her biggest movie to date, 2016’s “Suicide Squad,” which grossed $325.1 million domestically, that also had Will Smith as her co-star, which may have helped. 2020’s “Birds of Prey” put the spotlight more on Robbie’s Harley Quinn, and that tapped out at $84 million domestic after a $33 million opening, not helped by the advent of the pandemic. In theory, James Gunn’s 2021 sequel “The Suicide Squad” was also hindered by COVID, only making $55.8 million. Although Robbie has appeared in a few auteur films in recent years, including David O. Russell‘s “Amberdam” and Damien Chazelle’s “Babylon” – neither made more than $20 million domestic – “Barbie” may be seen as her first true test as a lead in a major studio release.

The fact that Mattel has been producing Barbie dolls since the ’50s means that many older women will have played with them as kids, and most of them will now have kids, maybe even grandkids, themselves, making “Barbie” a big nostalgia draw, similar to “The Super Mario Bros. Movie.” (Nintendo’s video games have been around for 30 fewer years.)

Early reactions have been quite good, while reviews (currently at 90% on Rotten Tomatoes) for the movie hit on Tuesday night with lots of praise for Gerwig and Gosling specifically. Unfortunately, it’s not exactly a movie for little girls, despite the subject matter, and it might be considered too “woke” for a large part of America. Regardless of positive reviews, we might see a more middling CinemaScore come Saturday.

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Early reports have “Barbie” making nearly $60 million before opening weekend and with advance sales like that, there’s little doubt that “Barbie” can end up over $100 million for the weekend and with as much as $120 to 130 million, which would be very good for Warner Bros, who has not been having a great year otherwise.

On the other side of this coin is Christopher Nolan’s latest film “Oppenheimer,” a biopic about the physicist and “father” of the atomic bomb, J. Robert Oppenheimer, as played by Nolan regular Cillian Murphy. “Oppenheimer” is a three-hour film about the title character’s work on fashioning the very first atomic bomb and the repercussions of that bomb being used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to essentially end World War II.

Although Nolan’s last film, “Tenet,” crashed and burned with its mid-pandemic release in 2020 – it still made $300 million overseas – Nolan’s box office track record is pretty solid with $2.7 billion made domestically, much of that coming from his “Dark Knight” movies and 2010’s “Inception.” 2014’s “Interstellar” and 2017’s “Dunkirk” were more in the $190 million range.

The cast around Murphy is phenomenal, including Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Robert Downey Jr. and Florence Pugh, with Murphy being front and center as the first-time lead in a major studio release. Even so, Murphy has appeared in almost all of Nolan’s biggest movies, playing the Scarecrow in his “Dark Knight” movies and having small roles in “Inception” and “Dunkirk.” Murphy also starred in 2021’s hit sequel “A Quiet Place: Part II,” and though “Oppenheimer” is probably more about Nolan at the helm, Murphy will be familiar to the filmmaker’s fans. The movie also has Damon and Downey as strong box office draws, while Blunt and Pugh also have their fans.

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Not only do I expect the reviews (hitting Wednesday around noon Eastern) to be phenomenal, but this is one of the year’s very first bonafide awards contenders, not only for Best Picture and Murphy but also many other categories, such as Downey in the Supporting Actor category. In many ways, “Oppenheimer” may seem like it’s being released too early for awards, but it’s likely to be a movie that many will be talking over the next few months, giving it a jumpstart on September festival season.

That all said, it’s still a three-hour movie, which limits the number of showings, plus it’s an R-rated movie, which limits its audience, and there’s nothing to say that anyone under 30 will care about the subject matter. “Oppenheimer” is likely to end up generally in a similar $50 million opening range as “Dunkirk,” but expect it to hold up well, especially once it comes to awards season.

Those two movies should win first and second place with ease, which might make you wonder where that leaves Tom Cruise’s action sequel “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part 1” and Angel Studios’ surprise hit “Sound of Freedom.”  The former might have a larger drop in its second weekend, but should still stay ahead of the latter in its third weekend. There’s a good chance that Pixar’s “Elemental” can pull out another astoundingly negligible drop to take fifth place over “Insidious” and “Indiana Jones.”

Lionsgate is also releasing the horror film “Cobweb” about an eight-year-old who hears knocking noises coming from the walls of the house. Directed by Samuel Bodin, it stars Lizzy Caplan, Antony Starr and Cleopatra Coleman, but there is no theater count yet and no word Lionsgate will even report the movie’s box office.

Check back on Sunday to see how all of the above films do at the box office.

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