2023’s Box Office Makes It Clear That Audiences Want More Than Just Sequels And Reboots
Even people who hardly ever pay attention to box office happenings probably made note of the fact that both “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” made big waves this past weekend. Director Greta Gerwig’s adaptation of Mattel’s beloved doll and Christopher Nolan’s R-rated biopic about J. Robert Oppenheimer debuted on the same day and the “Barbenheimer” phenomenon led to the biggest weekend of moviegoing since “Avengers: Endgame” debuted in 2019. Though perhaps not the intention of either Warner Bros. or Universal, what these movies managed to do said an awful lot about the state of theatrical exhibition. Put simply, moviegoers want more than just sequels and reboots of already-established IP.
“Barbie” is going to cross $400 million worldwide any day now, and “Oppenheimer” may well become Nolan’s sixth movie to make at least $500 million at the box office. Yet what we’re dealing with is a remarkably weird adaptation of a children’s toy that is rated PG-13 and decidedly not aimed directly at children on one side, with a three-hour biopic with very little action on the other. These are not the sorts of movies that Hollywood has been betting on in recent years in the hopes of finding a big-budget hit. Yet, both movies found bigger audiences than anyone expected despite competing directly against one another. That’s no small thing.
We’re not dealing with “original” movies here as they’re both adapting something, but they’re certainly far removed from something like “The Flash,” which was kind of a sequel to “Justice League” in some way and was trying to set up lots of future projects that will never come to pass. Nor are they anything like “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny,” a very costly miscalculation by Disney and Lucasfilm that is poised to lose a ridiculous amount of money.