Oppenheimer Just Crossed A Major Milestone For An R-Rated Movie At The Box Office
Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" just crossed a pretty major milestone at the box office as the film gets ready to enter its fourth weekend in theaters. The biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, can now officially count itself as one of the top 10 highest-grossing R-rated movies in history. But this movie still has a lot of juice left to squeeze out of it, meaning Universal Pictures is only going to watch it climb higher and higher on the all-time charts from here on out.
According to The Numbers, "Oppenheimer" has pulled in $578.6 million worldwide up to this point, which includes $238.1 million domestically and $340.5 million internationally. That's enough to kick 2015's "Fifty Shades of Grey" ($570.7 million) out of the top 10 lifetime grosses for an R-rated movie (not adjusted for inflation).
Nolan's latest now sits behind "The Hangover Part II" ($586.7 million), which it will pass as soon as Friday. Come Monday morning, it will likely surpass "Logan" ($619 million) and "The Passion of the Christ" ($622.3 million) to take the number seven spot. Beyond that, the film would have to hit the $700 million mark to overtake China's massive blockbuster "Detective Chinatown 3." But that seems to be all but assured at this point, and it's a matter of when it happens.
The top five R-rated movies of all time are "It" ($701 million), "The Matrix Reloaded" ($738.5 million), "Deadpool" ($781.9 million), "Deadpool 2" ($786.3 million), and "Joker" ($1.06 billion). It should be noted that the "Deadpool 2" figure includes the "Once Upon a Deadpool" re-release, which added about $51 million to the running total. But that's the competition, and it's a question of how high Nolan's three-hour phenomenon can go.
How high can Oppenheimer climb?
Amazingly enough, within Nolan's own filmography, "Oppenheimer" recently passed "Dunkirk" ($527 million) and it will very likely pass "Interstellar" ($647.8 million) very soon. The fact that it has more than a good shot at passing "Inception" ($825.7 million) remains staggering. All three of these movies, on paper, seem more commercially viable than a three-hour, R-rated biopic with very little action in it, particularly in the post-pandemic landscape. But that's the power of Nolan. At this point, it seems likely the movie will wind up in the top five in terms of all-time R-rated grosses, but it's difficult to say precisely where it will finish.
One of the most impressive things about what "Oppenheimer" has done thus far is that it has made a shocking amount of its money by selling premium format tickets. IMAX has accounted for 22% of the global total alone, with the company recently extending the film's 70MM run through the end of August, due to popular demand. That's to say nothing of other premium formats such as Cinemark XD and Dolby Cinema.
Audiences are happy to pay a higher ticket price to see this film in the best presentation possible. That's no small accomplishment in the marketplace as it currently exists. The biggest casualty of the whole thing has been "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning, Part One" which was counting on IMAX screens to help goose its box office total. Sorry, Tom Cruise. Christopher Nolan wins this round.
"Oppenheimer" is in theaters now.