Barbenheimer Bomb Proves to Have Lasting Effects After All
Welcome to another weekly installment of Couch Potato, where I go over what went down on the big and small screens so you can be a better-informed viewer.
Barbenheimer wound up being much more than a one-weekend party, proving those who thought the backlash against Barbie from some groups would be enough to derail its success. The doll added $93 million domestically, bringing her global total to $774.5 million. Barbie is essentially guaranteed to be a billion-dollar picture, and it is now simply a matter of how quickly she’ll hit that total. Ken is still just Ken.
Oppenheimer fans can rejoice as the three-hour picture has proven capable of making its own boom at the box office. Christopher Nolan’s latest movie has climbed to $400 million globally, with an additional $46.2 million earned domestically this week. Interestingly enough, as everything else has gone for this tag team event at the movie theater, both movies had near identical holds going into their second weekends, with a 43% drop for Barbie and a 44% drop for Oppenheimer.
Unfortunately, the scariest part about The Haunted Mansion’s debut was its box office performance. It could only pick up the scraps left behind by the other two movies opening with a measly $24.2 million domestically and $33.2 million globally. It also had a frightening Rotten Tomatoes score of 41%. Based on the debut performance, The Haunted Mansion looks like a movie that will quickly be released digitally. Hopefully, it’ll fare better there.
Speaking of digital releases, let’s move over to streaming where The Outlaws is still number one for its third week in a row bringing in an additional 12 million views. Two newcomers rounded out the rest of the “Top of the Top 10” with Unknown: Cave of Bones earning 6.5 million views and They Cloned Tyrone coming in right behind it at 6.3 million views.
When it comes to shows, the new season of Sweet Magnolias debuted at number one with 39.5 million hours viewed. This moved season two of The Lincoln Lawyer to second place and the most recent season of The Witcher to third place for the week.
Next week, I’ll have my eyes on a few new releases for you. Will Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles bring the fight to Barbenheimer? If not, can The Meg 2 chomp up the competition? My bet is personally on Barbie remaining number one, but maybe one of the newcomers can take on Oppenheimer. We will see what happens.
Stay tuned for that, and until next time, happy viewing!
Special to The Central Observer, Elton Allen