'Barbie' and 'Oppenheimer' Fuel Over $300 Million Box Office Weekend - Saturday Morning Update

Saturday Morning: At a time when Hollywood fears the third and fourth quarter 2023 release schedule may collapse due to the SAG-AFTRA and WGA twin strikes, the film industry is reaping one of the biggest domestic box office weekends on record. It's with Barbie from Warner Bros. and Universal's Oppenheimer firing an estimated $308 million three-day total.

It was the biggest post-pandemic weekend, easily burying the weekend when Spider-Man: No Way Home opened Dec. 17-19, 2021 and all photos totaled $281.8 million. According to Comscore, this weekend will be the fourth largest ever, after the Avengers: Endgame frame (April 26-28, 2019; $402 million), the Avengers: Infinity War weekend (April 27-29, 2018; $314.8 million), and the weekend where Star Wars: The Force Awakens debuted (all photos from Dec 18-20, 2015 totaling $313.2 million).

Barbie has plenty of bragging rights beyond owning a dream house and a sports car: Warners still says $150 million + 3 days for the American blonde. But industry calculations put it at well over $161 million. Either way, it's the biggest opening weekend of 2023 so far after a year-to-date opening day of $70.5 million.

Oppenheimer is targeting $77 million 3 days after an opening day of $33 million. Oppenheimer is Christopher Nolan's third-best career opener at the US/Canadian box office; it's also the best opening for an R-rated movie so far this year, surpassing John Wick: Chapter 4 ($73.8 million). It's also a testament to the fan power he's built up since his Dark Knight days, the 18-34 group here still 59% strong. Both movies get solid A CinemaScores. Note that whatever the industry calls safe here this morning could pay off like a broken slot machine by tonight: every time there's heat on a movie, it just keeps going up and up and up at the box office.

A cast points out that never before in box office history has a weekend seen a movie open at $100 million and a second at $50 million.

This should be a coming to Jesus moment for major studios: get back to the negotiating tables with SAG-AFTRA and get a deal done. The Guild's National Executive Director and Chief Negotiator, Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, told Deadline yesterday that they were still awaiting a response from the AMPTP and were ready to talk. After the industry and the exhibition struggled to bring the box office back to this point after a year of shutdowns in major markets during Covid, why should the whole industry allow the ecosystem to capsize again? Already, there are whispers that Dune: Part Two is moving its first weekend to a November release date. If that happens, it will leave a huge crater in the pre-holiday schedule. Why waste a good thing?