Barbie is, indeed, at Barbie this weekend, with Greta Gerwig taking over the plastic and pink event earning $70.5 million On the opening day for the biggest domestic box office opening of the year.
That’s ahead of its predecessor, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which earned $51.8 million on its June opening day. It also beat the top two single-day grosses for The Super Mario Bros. on April 7 ($54.8 million) and 8 ($57 million). Clearly, the power of the pink marketing cycle has paid off.
Now, Barbie is on pace to surpass Mario in its opening weekend as well, taking in $146 million domestically in its three-day opening weekend after an April 5 release helped benefit from the Easter weekend. Truly chasing Mario will have an uphill battle, however, as Mario has grossed $574 million at the domestic box office and $1.3 billion worldwide to date.
By contrast, Oppenheimer earned $33 million on the same opening day as Barbie at the domestic box office. The two films have reached meme status in recent months due to their shared release date and wildly different tones, with social media dubbing the two together as “Barbenheimer” and suggesting watching the two as a double feature.
Critically, both the films are doing well. We called Barbie “a masterful exploration of femininity and the pressures of perfection” in our 9/10 review, and Oppenheimer called it “Christopher Nolan’s most succinct and most precise creation” with a score of 10/10.
