As the writers’ strike moves towards its fourth month and the actors’ strike ends its first, the future is looking increasingly shaky for Hollywood. Yet box-office takings have rarely been healthier, with strong second weekends for both Barbie and Oppenheimer meaning sold-out screenings and unprecedented post-pandemic buzz.
Greta Gerwig’s feminist comedy was again the weekend leader, taking $93m globally from Friday to Sunday, a drop of 43% from its opening weekend: the seventh-biggest second weekend in history. Overall, Barbie has so far made $775m globally and is already the third best-performing film of the year.
Meanwhile Christopher Nolan’s atomic bomb epic took $46.6m on its second weekend, making it the first R-rated film in the US to make more than $10m over 10 consecutive days. Its global total stands at $400m, already more than Nolan’s previous film, Tenet.
One victim of this combined success is the seventh Mission: Impossible film, currently on $448m globally. Although more than its production budget of $291m, it still marks a disappointing falloff for the well-reviewed Tom Cruise blockbuster, whose momentum has taken a hit from the Barbenheimer juggernaut.
July was up 1.4% from pre-Covid levels, but the overall box office for 2023 is still down roughly 20% – in part because of the considerable uplift Cruise’s previous movie, Top Gun: Maverick, had on 2022 takings.
• This article was amended on 31 July 2023. An earlier version said that Oppenheimer had already made “more than Nolan’s previous two films, Tenet and Batman Begins”. The latter was not one of the director’s previous two films.
