Oppenheimer Soars Past $400 Million Mark At The Global Box Office
Despite the continued dominance of "Barbie" and new competition from Disney's "Haunted Mansion," Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" has continued its winning streak at the box office. Following its strong second weekend in theaters, the biopic about the man who gave us the A-bomb has officially crossed the $400 million mark globally and will soon enter the top ten highest-grossing movies of the year. At this point for Nolan and Universal Pictures, it's all gravy.
"Oppenheimer" now sits at $400.3 million worldwide thanks to a stellar $46.2 million second weekend domestically. That represents a drop of just 44%, even while "Barbie" continued to absolutely dominate with a $93 million second weekend. The fact of the matter is that moviegoers are continuing to show up to both movies in droves and neither cannibalized any business from one another. Truthfully, the whole "Barbenheimer" phenomenon probably helped both movies with a ton of organic attention online. Whatever the case, Universal is benefitting greatly from Nolan's fallout with Warner Bros. right now.
Nolan's three-hour, R-rated biopic is benefitting greatly from its huge run in IMAX right now, with those expensive, premium format tickets goosing the overall box office numbers. The film carries a reported $100 million budget. Coupled with a surely comparable marketing budget, the movie is probably at or at least close to its break-even point. That means, Universal and Nolan both stand to make a lot of money from the film as its run is far from over.
Christopher Nolan scores again
As it stands, "Oppenheimer" is going to overtake "John Wick: Chapter 4" ($426.9 million) to become not just the tenth highest-grossing movie of the year, but also the biggest R-rated movie of the year so far. It's hard to imagine anything coming down the pipeline for the rest of the year topping it, either. While it's tough to say how much upcoming competition will cut into its future earnings, $700 million worldwide is very much in sight, if not much more. For context, it's very likely to overtake "Interstellar" ($647.8 million) to become Nolan's fourth biggest movie ever. The fact that it has an outside shot at passing "Inception" ($825.7 million) is absolutely staggering.
What's most impressive is that we're currently dealing with a three-hour movie with very little action where lots of fantastic actors spend a lot of time talking intensely and doing lots of science. It's, on paper, not as easy a sell as say, a movie where Leonardo DiCaprio leads a heist into a billionaire's mind, or Matthew McConaughey going on an intergalactic trek. It speaks volumes about Nolan's cache as a filmmaker with the moviegoing public, that much is certain.
August doesn't have much by way of high-profile competition, save for perhaps "Blue Beetle." The biggest competition is on the way this week in the form of both "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" and "Meg 2: The Trench," though neither movie is expected to make a fortune. So Nolan's latest still has a lot of room to run and could very easily become his biggest movie that doesn't have Batman in it. No small thing.
"Oppenheimer" is in theaters now.