The box office was just hit with a pink glitter bomb

Over the weekend, the US box office brought in a combined ~$302 million in ticket sales, good for its fourth-largest weekend in history.

Its biggest driver? Barbie and Oppenheimer, which together accounted for more than three-fourths of the entire total. The hype surrounding Barbenheimer, it seems, was real.

🎀 Barbie: The very pink Greta Gerwig-directed comedy debuted to $155 million at the US box office, beating out The Super Mario Bros. Movie ($146 million) to take the title for the largest opening of 2023.

It’s also good for the biggest US opening for a female-directed movie, solo or otherwise. The two previous closest films were Patty Jenkins’ Wonder Woman ($103 million) and the Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck-directed Captain Marvel ($153 million).

💥 Oppenheimer: Opened to $81 million domestically, well above analysts’ expectations of ~$50 million. This ranks the Christopher Nolan-directed biopic as the third-biggest opening for a biographical film in North America, behind American Sniper ($89 million) and The Passion of the Christ ($84 million).

🧲 Opposites attract: Part of what drove the hype-wheel behind Barbenheimer was how diametrically opposed the two films were – one a fun, pink-themed comedy and the other about the creation of the atomic bomb. Now, we can actually quantify the difference: Barbie is skewing heavily female (68%), while Oppenheimer is attracting mostly males (64%).