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It is quite conceivable another near $200M weekend will be in store at the box office over the weekend of July 21-21.
Warner Bros.’ highly anticipated comedic feature take on girl toy Barbie starring Margot Robbie in the title role and Ryan Goslin as Ken cruised on to tracking today and hot would be a modest way of describing the box office outlook here. While Warners is conservatively saying $60M, tracking shows that Barbie is bigger than Little Mermaid in pulling in general audiences and young women under 25. A weekend start of $80M minimum is what we’re hearing, and that too is a tampered-down-expectation, for Barbie on paper has all the glitz for a potential $100M start. Little Mermaid‘s 3-day over the Memorial Day holiday weekend was $95.5M.
Barbie’s sweet spot is under 35 year old females and secondarily 35-49 year-olds.
Also, Barbie presales at this point in time are pacing ahead of Little Mermaid. At the Wednesday before its opening Little Mermaid counted $19M in advance ticket sales before grossing a first Friday/previews day of $38.1M. Little Mermaid attracted 68% women, 61% between 18-34 with the largest demo being 25-34 year olds at 35%.
Now Christopher Nolan’s three-hour atomic bomb architect movie, Oppenheimer, isn’t looking at leftovers. As one distribution insider describes its wattage, “it’s as much male and older as Barbie is female and younger.” We’re also hearing that one should not discount the female audience here in attending Oppenheimer, both under/over 25 is strong too for this ensemble which stars Cillian Murphy, Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, Florence Pugh, Robert Downey, Jr. and more. A $40M to possible $50M opening is expected here, the Universal movie having full control of Imax theaters for three weeks. Nolan’s Dunkirk opened to $50.5M and legged out to $189.7M. You’ll remember that Nolan’s previous film back in August 2020, Tenet, got shuttered theaters opened in the U.S. during Covid (except for LA, NYC and San Francisco) and posted a $20M 5-day gross over Labor Day weekend, including a pre-release in Canada; that film with its hands tied behind its back.
Filling out the rest of the near $200M weekend over July 21-23 is the second weekend of Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning – Part One with a round $35M. That’s looking at a franchise best launch, and it wouldn’t be unheard of if that movies does $100M in five days over July 12-16. Paramount will hand Imax and PLFs over to Oppenheimer in its second weekend.