Barbenheimer! Dual debuts break Aussie box office records
The duelling cinema debuts of Barbie and Oppenheimer — an event that’s taken on the moniker ”Barbenheimer” — led the Australian box office to its biggest Saturday and Sunday takings ever recorded.
Director Greta Gerwig’s pop culture blockbuster and Christopher Nolan’s moody World War II epic were released in Australia on Thursday, with many sessions for both films sold out at flagship cinemas across the country over the weekend.
Margot Robbie in Barbie. Alamy
According to data collected by the Motion Picture Distributors Association of Australia, the Australian box office grossed $11.1 million on Saturday and $10.5 million on Sunday – the largest one-day totals for each day in history.
The MPDAA estimated the Thursday to Sunday takings will be north of $34 million, making the debut weekend the second or third biggest in Australian history – behind the opening weekend of Avengers: Endgame in 2019 and Boxing Day weekend 2013, when Hobbit 3 andFrozen was released.
The eye-watering totals will be a shot in the arm for the movie industry, which has struggled to get audiences back to the cinemas since the pandemic-enforced closures.
“The incredible Australian performance of Barbie and Oppenheimer, together with strong holdovers from the school holidays, has propelled the local box office to its best weekend since April 2019 and one of the biggest weekends ever – both locally and globally,” said Lori Flekser, the Executive Director of the MPDAA.
Barbie in particular has been helped by a marketing campaign which has turned the film starring Australian Margot Robbie into an online sensation. Young people have been spotted attending the cinemas dressed in pink, posting videos from within the movies to Instagram and TikTok.
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