All eyes on the box-office this weekend.
“Barbie” is turning into this behemoth of a blockbuster. Projections are now saying a $158 million weekend awaits Greta Gerwig’s movie. It’ll be giving ‘Super Mario Bros’ a run for its money as the 2023 box-office champ.
Meanwhile, the early numbers for “Oppenheimer” also keep going up. It’s now set for a $65 million opening. This would make it the 15th highest-grossing opening for an R-rated film in history.
The rest of the field has Cruise’s ‘Mission: Impossible 7’ dropping heavily with just a $25 million and right behind it, lo and behold, “Sound of Freedom” at a $21 million estimate. The latter has legs, and then some.
Did Paramount f*ck up Mission Impossible’s release? Or are we just getting sick and tired of this franchise? It’s still delivering good movies, but that doesn’t seem to be enough for many audiences.
Just a word of caution: you will likely notice a lot of walkouts at “Oppenheimer” screenings, from “Barbie” fans who wanted to be part of the ‘Barbenheimer’ trend. I saw plenty at my screening of Nolan’s film yesterday. It’s a dense arthouse film masquerading as a blockbuster. There’s no way the mainstream catches on to this film, which is kind of miraculous that it’ll be making that much money this weekend.
Fun fact: the last time we had two films with a 50+ million opening at the box-office was in 2013 — that’s when “Monsters University” ($82.4M) and “World War Z” ($66.4M) were released in theaters.