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.
As we have been hinting for a while now, Barbenheimer landed this weekend, and it was quite the explosion (pun intended). Barbie reigned supreme with an impressive $155 million opening weekend domestically and a global total of $337 million. This is not only a career-best for stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling but also a huge win for the director, Greta Gerwig, who now has the biggest opening weekend of all time for a movie directed by a woman. To wrap up the victories this campy, pink-covered movie can add to its resume, it is also the biggest opening of the year for 2023, outcompeting The Super Mario Bros. Movie’s opening of $146.3 million. With these patterns emerging, don’t be surprised if you start seeing a lot of trailers for movies about toys and video games over the next few years.
What would Barbie be without the story of the creation of the atomic bomb to go with it? Oppenheimer had an impressive opening of its own, with $80.5 million domestically and $174.2 million globally. For a three-hour-long movie about the creation of an instrument of war, we’d call that a pretty explosive (last time, we promise) opening. Christopher Nolan and the entire cast and crew can hold their heads high at results like that.
Wrapping up the rest of the “Top of the Top 10” was not Mission Impossible, which is a huge loss for Tom Cruise. Instead, sleeper hit Sound of Freedom earned that spot with an impressive 26% drop. That is even more impressive considering that its competition was a pop-culture phenomenon. It added another $20.1 million domestically to its total of $1277 million. With a budget of only $14.5 million, that’s a huge win for Angel Studios. Mission Impossible suffered a 64% drop, knocking it out of the Top of the Top 10 and bringing its total to $118.7 million domestically.
If you opted to stay home during this event, you might have chosen to watch one of the top-performing movies or shows on Netflix this weekend. When it comes to movies, The Out-Laws held onto its number-one spot for the second week in a row with 28 million additional views. Adam Driver’s 65 took the number two spot with 6.8 million views in its debut week. Finally, Puss in Boots: The Last Wish strolled onto Netflix after a long and successful run both in theaters and on digital to the tune of 5.5 million views for its debut week.
Meanwhile, the second season of The Lincoln Lawyer climbed from second place to first place on streaming this week, with 35.3 million hours viewed. The third season of The Witcher is no stranger to the Top of the Top 10, with this week being no exception as it takes the second place spot with 32.1 million hours viewed. Finally, we have a newcomer to the Top of the Top 10, with season one of Fatal Seduction coming in third place after earning 24.8 million hours viewed.
Next week, in addition to keeping our eyes on Barbenheimer’s second-weekend drops to see if it was a one-weekend party or a longer victory for the studios, foolish mortals will be welcomed to Disney’s The Haunted Mansion. Will that or new horror film, Talk to Me, be enough to make a dent in Barbenheimer’s numbers? Or will the fabulous, campy, catastrophic, and devastating combination prove too compelling for moviegoers to resist?
Stay tuned for that, and until next time, happy viewing!