barbie oppenheimer

Source: Warner Bros / Universal

‘Barbie’, ‘Oppenheimer’

Rank Film (distributor) Three-day gross (July 28-30) Total gross to date                         Week
 1. Barbie  (Warner Bros) £13.2m £48m 2
 2. Oppenheimer  (Universal) £8.2m £27.7m 2
 3. Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One  (Paramount) £1.8m £20.3m 3
 4. Elemental  (Disney) £1.2m £11.8m 4
 5. Talk To Me (Altitude) £562,772 £643,354 1

GBP to USD conversion rate: 1.29

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is approaching the £50m mark after just 10 days in UK-Ireland cinemas, adding an excellent £13.2m on its second weekend as the Barbenheimer phenomenon continued.

The Warner Bros blockbuster dropped just 28.5% on its opening session, and is up to a £48m total. Barbie has already entered the top 60 highest-grossing films of all time, and is in Warner Bros top 15 – with Harry Potter titles as eight of those ahead of it.

It is tracking well ahead of Top Gun: Maverick, the highest-grossing film of 2022 in the territory, which had £38.5m after 10 days and ended on £83.6m; and is just behind 2021’s James Bond title No Time To Die, which had £52.7m and ended as the third-highest grosser on £98m. Barbie is also already the second-highest-grossing film of 2023, behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which it should overtake before next weekend.

Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer held even better than Barbie, dropping just 24% with £8.2m. The Universal drama is up to an outstanding £27.7m total and is the fifth-highest grossing film of the year, having already passed the totals of 2023 titles The Little Mermaid  (£27m) and Puss In Boots: The Last Wish (£25.7m). It has also topped Nolan’s Interstellar (£21m) and is coming up on Inception (£35.8m). 

On its third weekend in cinemas, Paramount’s Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One showed there is space for multiple blockbusters. The Tom Cruise-starring title dropped just 37% with £1.8m taking it to a £20.3m cume – the third-highest grossing of the series to date, and on course to overhaul the £24.2m of 2018’s Mission: Impossible Fallout to take the number one Mission: Impossible spot.

Disney’s Elemental fell just 18% on its fourth weekend, adding almost £1.2m to reach a decent £11.8m total.

Altitude has set an all-time company record with the £643,354 total opening for Australian horror Talk To Me, surpassing the £622,077 of Moonlight from February 2017.

As a useful bellwether for the effect of Barbenheimer on other films, Talk To Me took £562,772 at the weekend from 431 sites, at a location average of £1,306 – an excellent result, with few releases from independent distributors crossing a £1,000 location average since the pandemic.

Takings for the top five dropped for the first time in five weeks, falling 27.2% to £25m; but are still well above almost every weekend in the past four years. The wide release of another Warner Bros title next weekend – Meg 2: The Trench – will provide an interesting test of the durability of Barbenheimer.

Market receives Barbenheimer boost

Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny added £444,000 on its fifth weekend in cinemas – a 35% drop – and is up to almost £19.1m.

Moviegoers Entertainment’s Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem provided Another sign of the theatrical market’s ability to manage multiple titles. The Bollywood title opened to £370,882 from just 139 locations at a £2,668 average – an excellent figure for a non-English language film, especially on such a busy weekend.

Insidious: The Red Door leads Sony’s slate, adding £337,000 on its fourth session – a 37% drop – to reach a £7.3m total, overtaking the £7.2m of Insidious 2  to become the highest-grossing film in the series.

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse

Source: Sony Pictures

‘Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse’

Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse added £229,000 on its ninth weekend for Sony – a drop of just 13.6%. The film is up to almost £30.1m, chasing down the £30.7m of 2017’s live-action Homecoming.

With £66,000 on its 10th session, Disney’s The Little Mermaid dropped 42% on its previous session to pass the £27m mark – currently the sixth-highest-grossing film of the year.

The Super Mario Bros. Movie added £63,950 on its 17th weekend in cinemas – a slim 16% drop – and is up to £54.2m for Universal; which also has Ruby Gillman, Teenage Kraken, dropping 28% on its fifth weekend with £61,506 taking it to £2.3m.

Animation Mavka: The Forest Song opened to £54,495 on 255 screens for Miracle/Dazzler – its £214 location average distorted significantly by most of its Kids Club showings offering £2.49 tickets. 

Asteroid City added a further £23,228 on its sixth weekend for Universal, and is up to £4.8m, where it will end as the fourth-highest-grossing Wes Anderson film.

Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts added a further £21,000 on its eighth weekend in cinemas for Paramount, and is up to £8.2m – the lowest-grossing of the series to date.

Park Circus’ re-release of Sofia Coppola’s The Virgin Suicides opened to £16,186 from 77 cinemas.

No Hard Feelings added a further £12,000 for Sony on its sixth weekend, and has £3.9m in total