Weekend predictions: is Barbenheimer set for a $200-million opening?

July 21, 2023

Barbie

It looks like it’ll be a close-run thing, but we might be having the biggest weekend at the box office since the pandemic, with Barbie and Oppenheimer in with a shot of hitting $200 million between them, and enough juice from returning films to take us past the $281.6 million earned on the weekend Spider-Man: No Way Home debuted in December, 2021. Both films are looking set for great openings, but Barbie looks like it could be the one setting records.

What’s remarkable about Barbie is that it’s vastly outperforming the performance one would expect from a film with its pedigree. Greta Gerwig already has an impressive record as a director, but her biggest weekend came from Little Women, which opened with $16.8 million over Christmas weekend 2019. Likewise Margot Robbie, who is undoubtedly one of the biggest stars on screen, but whose best opening weekend in a non-DC Universe film came from Once Upon a Time… in Hollywood, which debuted with $41.1 million.

So, a the point of being greenlit, our model would have said Barbie should open with around $17 million from 3,326. Obviously things have changed considerably since then…

To start with, Warner Bros. managed to book Barbie into 4,243 theaters this weekend, which adds $4.8 million to the model’s prediction. The continued relative weakness of the market pulls the number down by $5.5 million.

Of course the buzz around Barbie has long being spectacular, and it’s been the film with our highest audience tracking adjustment almost all year. That number has been stepping up steadily, and stood at 295% as of this morning, which is an all-time high for any movie. Our model is still pretty conservative in its fundamentals prediction though, because it heavily discounts online buzz around a movie, which often doesn’t translate into ticket sales.

With the preview numbers in, that caution looks unnecessary…

With $1.1 million from early screenings and $21.2 million on Thursday from previews, Barbie has among the best preview numbers of any film since the pandemic. Hitting over $20 million usually leads to a quite front-loaded weekend—note that the best previews-to-weekend multiplier in the chart above is Black Panther’s 6.48. If Barbie does that, it’ll make $138.5 million this weekend. The model thinks $159 million is on the cards based purely on the previews, but ends with a prediction of $131.4 million after factoring in the fundamentals prediction.

I think that final prediction might be a bit on the low side, and $150 million is a good bet. When we reach this kind of level though, all bets are off. Word of mouth, repeat viewings, and the fact that this has become a cultural event will all play a factor in where the final box office number lands for this film. We’ll know more tomorrow morning.

Interestingly, our model came into the weekend thinking that Oppenheimer had very similar prospects to Barbie based on its fundamentals…

Although it hasn’t started out in quite the same style as Barbie, Oppenheimer still had impressive preview numbers on Thursday…

Notably, Oppenheimer made nearly twice as much from previews as Dunkirk did this weekend in 2017. That film went on to make $50.5 million on its opening weekend. Maintaining that kind of pace would give Oppenheimer a weekend somewhere in the region of $95 million. This is a case where I think the model’s conservatism is working in its favor. Even riding on the coattails of the Barbenheimer phenomenon, $83.3 million would be an amazing opening. Personally, I expect something a little behind that (perhaps $70 million), but two things might work in its favor. First, if enough people buy tickets for the double-bill, that will give the film a great boost. Second, people who can’t find tickets for Barbie might decide this is their second-choice this weekend.

Regardless, this looks likely to be Christopher Nolan’s best opening outside the Dark Knight series.

Here’s what the model thinks the top 10 will look like.

With Mission: Impossible and Sound of Freedom both looking decent bets for over $20 million this weekend, a combined weekend over $250 million looks like a good bet. The big unknowns are how Dead Reckoning will be affected by losing many IMAX and PLF screens this weekend, and whether Barbie and Oppenheimer will maintain their legs. If Barbie can pull off a $150-million debut, it looks like we should have the best weekend at the box office since the pandemic.

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Filed under: Weekend Preview, Barbie, Sound of Freedom, Mission: Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One, Oppenheimer, Greta Gerwig, Christopher Nolan