Oppenheimer vs Barbie: Battle For Box Office Business, Earnings Reveal Craze In India – News18

On July 21, two major Hollywood films, Oppenheimer and Barbie, were released in theatres. Despite both movies receiving a tremendous response from the audience, recent reports indicate that Christopher Nolan’s film has outperformed Margot Robbie’s Barbie at the Indian box office.

According to Sacnilk.com, Oppenheimer garnered Rs 13.50 crore net in India on its opening day, encompassing all languages. In contrast, Barbie managed to collect Rs 5 crore net on its debut day. It’s been reported that Barbie had sold 16,000 tickets for its opening day through advance booking across three major chains – PVR, INOX, and Cinepolis. On the other hand, Oppenheimer’s advance booking saw an impressive sale of close to 1.30 lakh tickets for its first day across the same cinema hall chains.

Moreover, according to latest data shared by ticketing platform BookMyShow, both films have a strong contribution to box office revenues and the craze seems to be seen this weekend as well.

Ashish Saksena, COO, cinemas, BookMyShow, said that it’s been a clash of the titans at the box office with both films exhibiting sheer cinematic brilliance and fans flocking to theatres for the big screen extravaganza.

Saksena added “With 1.4 million tickets booked for Oppenheimer on BookMyShow so far, there has been a strong platform contribution of 74% to the overall box office revenue collection for the film while over 500,000 tickets have been sold for Barbie with an equally mammoth contribution of 70% by BookMyShow to the overall box office revenue collection for India, both films are off to a skyrocketing start right off the bat.”

Cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Chennai continue to lead in ticket sales on BookMyShow, while cinephiles across India have been showing mammoth interest for both films, where cities like Pune, Kochi and Ahmedabad are in the lead when it comes to non-metros.

The absolute excitement to catch these films on the big screen and in the most immersive format of IMAX is also evident in non-typical show timings of 12 AM and even 3 AM shows running packed on BookMyShow, Saksena highlighted.

Interestingly, both films have attracted a significant number of cinephiles booking tickets for both, despite their contrasting themes and a substantial portion of the audience has planned their watching schedule for both movies on the same day.

“The prospects for these two films seem very promising over the course of the next week, riding on massive hype as they are expected to draw hordes of audiences to theatres across different formats, providing the ultimate big-screen experience,” Saksena said.

Oppenheimer and Barbie will continue the momentum built by Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One at the Indian box office, say trade experts.

In the duel between two major Hollywood titles, Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, a sprawling biographical drama on the titular American theoretical physicist played by Cillian Murphy, is expected to do better numbers than “Barbie”, a live-action film on the world-famous Mattel doll from actor-director Greta Gerwig, they said.

Gautam Dutta, PVR INOX co-CEO, credited Tom Cruise’s “Dead Reckoning Part One” for giving a blockbuster start to the second half of 2023.

“The whole trend started with ‘Mission: Impossible’. It was released on Wednesday and the weekend was colossal… The whole momentum got created with that. This month also sees a huge opening of Oppenheimer and Barbie. This is by far the most positive news because people are flocking back to cinemas.

“We are expecting an industry wise opening day gross box office collection of Rs 7 crore for Oppenheimer and Rs 4 crore for Barbie. The first weekend (Friday-Sunday) collection could be around Rs 30 crore for Oppenheimer and Rs 15 crore for ‘Barbie’,” Dutta recently told news agency PTI.

“Dead Reckoning Part One”, the seventh film in Cruise’s spy action franchise “Mission: Impossible” that hit Indian screens on July 12, reportedly raised Rs 50 crore in the first five days of its release.

Its maker Paramount Pictures India claimed the movie has registered the “biggest opening day and opening weekend” for the franchise, Cruise and the studio in the country.