Over the summer, on July 21st, two highly anticipated movies came out on the same day. “Barbie” by Greta Gerwig, and “Oppenheimer” by Christopher Nolan. These movies have made a massive impact on pop culture and have brought together many different audiences.
On Barbie’s first week of release, it was estimated by dexerto.com to make 55 million dollars. However, it ended up tripling to 162 million dollars in the first few days. With the release of Barbie, it managed to gain Warner Bros the title of Biggest Release of the Year since “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part II”.
Every week since Barbie was released, it has broken a record. As of recently, collider.com has stated that Barbie has become the highest-grossing movie of 2023 reaching 575.4 million dollars domestically on the week of August 24th. So far Barbie has already grossed 1.3 billion dollars globally and will surpass The Super Mario Bros movie in the worldwide gross soon.
Oppenheimer has made a total of around 180 million dollars in its opening week of being released. Grossing over 865.5 million dollars, dextero.com says it is predicted to likely make close to 900 million dollars worldwide. It made a large amount from showing in IMAX, making 27% of its box office. As Oppenheimer is an R-rated movie the main audience watching the movie is adults.
The audiences between the two differ by a pretty significant amount. Demographic statistics show Barbie fans are much more likely to be young adults that are between the age of 18-29 compared to Oppenheimer fans which is 27% young adults while Barbie is 36%. The statistics also show that Oppenheimer fans are more likely to be older, with a quarter of its audience being people over the age of 45. Oppenheimer has 39% of people over 45 watching while Barbie has 25% of their audience being over 45 years of age. Barbie fans are more likely to also be women while Oppenheimer fans are most likely men. Barbie has 54% women watching and 46% men and Oppenheimer has 39% women and 61% men. With these statistics from hollywoodreporter.com we can also see that Barbie attracts more fans of the opposite gender by 7%. We did a social media post to see how many people preferred one movie over the other. Barbie has 37 votes (77%) and Oppenheimer has 11 votes (23%).
Barbie and Oppenheimer were the two most popular movies that came out this summer and had a massive influence on audiences of all ages. Barbie brought its audience in with its hysterical scenes and a pink-themed world. Oppenheimer gave its audiences some of the most suspenseful and intense scenes of the decade. Both of these movies had a massive influence on the movie industry, and with their replay value, can be watched for a long time.
