Barbie And Oppenheimer Are King And Queen Of The Box Office Again This Weekend

Barbenheimer is back, baby!

After getting nudged down to No.3 by Warner Bros.' "Meg 2: The Trench" last weekend, Christopher Nolan's "Oppenheimer" has reclaimed second place at the U.S. box office with an estimated $5.1 million Friday, which should result in a $17.2 million three-day gross. Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" is still the queen of the multiplexes in her fourth weekend at No. 1, pulling in $10 million on Friday and gunning for a $30 million three-day. 

As for new releases, André Øvredal's atmospheric Dracula-on-a-boat flick, "Last Voyage of the Demeter," could only suck up an estimated $2.6 million on Friday, which does not bode well for the profitability of the $45 million-budgeted film, nor Universal's hopes for a rebooted Classic Monster franchise. Coming on the heels of Chris McKay's disappointingly anemic "Renfield," the studio might want to keep the Count coffin-bound for the foreseeable future.

Still, the big story here is the continuing strength of Barbenheimer, and the resurgent box office. After a not-so-hot spring and ho-hum early summer, Americans are back in the moviegoing habit. This is what happens when you let visionary directors make quality movies sans cookie-cutter edicts. "Barbie" crossed $500 million domestically on Friday, and is now the highest-grossing female-directed movie ever. Meanwhile, the commercial performance of "Oppenheimer," a three-hour biopic about the physicist who directed the successful development of the atomic bomb, continues to astound. It dipped a mere 38 percent in its third weekend, and appears to be on track for a 41 percent hold this weekend.

Nolan's film is guaranteed to become the highest-grossing film to never finish number one at the domestic box office (as it's highly unlikely it will ever overtake "Barbie" for the top spot), but, as I wrote a couple of weeks ago, it could pass a far more impressive milestone.

Mel Gibson's "The Passion of the Christ" was a box office sensation in 2004, grossing $371 million thanks in large part to a massive push from conservative media and their audience's desire to watch the son of god get the crap kicked out of him for two hours. 19 years later, it's still the highest grossing R-rated movie in U.S. box office history.

Todd Phillips' "Joker" is currently the worldwide R-rated box office champ with a $1.1 billion lifetime take ("Deadpool" is a fairly distant second with $786 million gross), and "Oppenheimer," given its subject matter, will never approach that number. But that $371 million could be within reach if the studios keep pushing back release dates because they do not want to pay writers and actors a fair wage (i.e. the ongoing WGA/SAG-AFTRA strike). I also think Baby Boomers, who've been reluctant to return to theaters post-pandemic, could start showing up in reasonably significant numbers as seats become less packed.

"Oppenheimer" is $34 million off the pace of "The Passion of the Christ" at this point in its domestic release, but the rest of this August looks incredibly weak, and September doesn't look terribly promising either. Watch those week-to-week holds, and keep in mind that Gibson's film fell off a box-office cliff after Easter weekend (sustaining a massive 73% drop). If "Oppenheimer" can hold onto enough screens into the fall, it could, uh, cross that $371 million milestone.