Movie Theater Owners Say 200,000 Plan to See ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ on the Same Day

thewrap.com:

Oppenheimer” and 89% and 8.2/10 for “Barbie“), Hollywood is looking at a skewed rerun of another box office showdown from July 2008.Fifteen years ago, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” broke the opening weekend record with $158 million, but Meryl Streep’s “Mamma Mia!” also nabbed what was at the time the largest Friday-Sunday debut ever ($28 million) against a $100 million-plus opener.

History may be repeating itself, with Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” looking to clear triple digits right as Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” hopes to open on par with the over/under $50 million launches of “Interstellar” and “Dunkirk.” The record set in 2008 against a Nolan epic may be set again this weekend *by* a Nolan epic. “According to our estimates, we project that more than 200,000 moviegoers in North America will be enjoying an exciting same-day double feature of ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer,’ in addition to the millions of worldwide moviegoers who are planning to see both films on different days this weekend,” NATO president and CEO Michael O’Leary said.Hopes are high that “Barbie” will at least score Warner Bros.

Discovery’s biggest opening since “The Batman” ($134 million) in early 2022, although WBD is keeping projections under $80 million while rival independent projections put it closer to the over/under $120 million launches of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.

3” and “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse.” “Oppenheimer” isn’t expecting to scale such heights, but hopes are (also) high that the Universal-distributed atomic bomb drama will leg out, both due to a monopoly on Imax screens for the next month and due to being the de-facto grown-up event movie of the season akin to “The Road to Perdition” or “Baby Driver” in summers past.