“Barbenheimer” fever hit the UK when Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” and Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” made a combined £30 million in their first weekend at the box office.
The UK Cinema Association says that this is the best weekend for movies in the UK since 2019.
The Disney hit Avengers: Endgame came out that year and made £43.7 million in its first week.
The movie theater chain Vue said that this weekend was the second busiest in its history.
Barbie is now on track to beat Super Mario Bros. and become the biggest movie released so far this year.
On Monday, the UK box office numbers for the weekend will be broken down in more depth.
The marketing effort for Barbie has been huge and very successful, bringing in $337 million (£293 million) in its first year around the world.
The money it made in the US and Canada was enough to make it the biggest opening of 2023 in that area so far.
Universal Pictures said that Oppenheimer made $93.7 million (£72 million), and Warner Bros. said that the movie made about $155 million (£120 million).
The North American box office number broke the record for a female director’s first weekend, easily beating the $103.3 million that Wonder Woman made in its first weekend.
Both movies have been a nice break for movie theaters that are trying to compete with the huge growth of streaming.
The story of Oppenheimer is about how the first atomic bomb was made, and it stars Cillian Murphy and is directed by Christopher Nolan.
Who was Robert Oppenheimer in real life?
The US box office goes to the movie about Barbie.
Critics say what they think about the Barbie movie.
In Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy makes a big difference.
Barbie tells a story about a child coming of age in which the child’s character figures out who she is and pushes her friend Ken to do the same.
PostTrak, a film tracking service, told Billboard that 65% of the people who went to see Barbie were women and that 40% of the people who bought tickets were under the age of 25.
Barbie did not always have an easy time, though. The movie started in fifth place in China, which is the world’s second largest movie market.
According to data from consulting company Artisan Gateway, it only made $8.2 million in its first three days. However, it’s not unusual for Chinese audiences to prefer homegrown films over Hollywood, and some analysts thought that making $8 million was better than expected.
At the same time, one showing of Nolan’s movie in India was said to have Barbie subtitles, which was a surprise for the people there.
“A friend of my cousin wrote on Instagram that a movie theater was showing Oppenheimer with Barbie subtitles,” wrote Sapun on Twitter.
Officials in Pakistan’s Punjab province said that “objectionable content” kept Barbie from coming out on Friday.
