It is, as portmanteaus go, not especially satisfying. Barbenheimer? Bar. Ben. Hi. Mur? Rhythmically, we are here on a par with an out-of-tune piano tumbling down a staircase of whoopee cushions. Or a line of exposition from Tenet. But as an unwitting marketing strategy? Genius. Total and utter genius. Traditionally when there has been a day-of-release chart battle — Blur versus Oasis, say — you have two highly motivated, obsessive fan bases going out and basically buying what they would buy anyway: the only sales bump coming via the tiny, crazy percentage of multiple copy/ticket buyers present on each side.
Thanks to an uncharacteristically nice social media trend, the summer’s two competing biggest movies have harnessed the additional power of... each other’s highly motivated, obsessive fan bases. And you can bet that right now, Hollywood is pooing its quarterly- sales-target-dependant bonus-pants at the possibilities. ‘Forget Batman v Superman! Now we can just put out Batman and Superman on the same day! We’ll get the kids to call it, um... Bat-man?’
