What Can Hollywood Learn From the Barbenheimer Success?

Did Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig just save the movie business?

Over the weekend, films fans finally got to experience the movie event of the year. Barbenheimer, a term created by online fans which obviously references the same-day release of Barbie and Oppenheimer, not only lived up to the hype but actually exceeded most expectations. Both films received an A grade in CinemaScore exit polls and currently hold scores higher than 90% on Rotten Tomatoes with both critics and fans, but perhaps even more notably, they powered the North American box office to its greatest post-pandemic performance to date.

Experts estimate that theaters earned about $302 million in total weekend ticket sales, with Barbie and Oppenheimer accounting for approximately $235.5 million of that. This weekend also marked the first time in history that two films opened to over $80 million each. Usually, when anything results in this much success, there are lessons to be learned. And the lesson studios should takeaway from the success of these two films is this: In order to get modern audiences to show up to the movie theater, you have to do more than just get people interested in the story you’re telling on screen. You have to create an experience that has value independent of the actual movie that you’re trying to sell.

For most of their history, Hollywood studios could get people to come out to the cinema simply by creating a desire to see what was promised to be shown on screen. The story, the action, the drama, the romance, the plot, and the movie stars at the center of all of it—this is what got people to buy a ticket. Certainly, all of these things still matter today and the quality of a film is still a major contributing factor to its success at the box office. However, studios now also have an obligation to dispel the wrongheaded idea held by many modern entertainment consumers that going to the movie theater is essentially just spending extra money, and exerting unnecessary effort, for an experience that they can have on their couch for free.

In an era when many new releases are either being premiered on streaming and VOD services or being quickly moved there after brief theatrical runs, studios must recognize that they need to give people a reason to show up to the theater that is separate from just promising them an exciting, funny, or entertaining story.

A great example of how hard it is for studios not only to just garner interest in a film but garner interest in seeing that film in theaters is the Jennifer Lawrence led comedy, No Hard Feelings, which was released earlier this year. It wouldn’t be fair to suggest that the R-rated coming-of-age tale has done bad at the box office, as it has amounted a solid amount of money over its theatrical run, but it definitely underperformed some expectations upon its initial release. The reason I think it is relevant to this conversation though is because when the trailer for this film was released online, it did create a fair amount of buzz and cause the film to have a somewhat viral moment. I’m not saying the trailer was viewed as many times as the trailer for, say, Avengers: Endgame or anything like that—but it was clear from the online reaction that there was genuine audience interest in this film. Then No Hard Feelings was released and it became clear that many of those potential audience members did have a desire to see the film, just not a desire to go to the theater to do it. They were fine with waiting for the film to come to them on a streaming service, because they have become accustomed to that being the norm.

It wouldn’t be unfair to note that a lot of the blame for this audience behavior can be placed on the studios themselves. They have mishandled the release strategy of so many major films by yanking them out of theaters and throwing them on a VOD platform far too quickly. I believe that goes without saying but I want to make sure that none of what I’m arguing comes across as a defense of the studios who are being plagued by factors beyond their control. In many ways, they have been their own worst enemy. Not to mention, at this particular and historic moment in Hollywood history, studios don’t deserve any defending.

The reason the Barbenheimer meme turned legitimate movement led to the financial success of those two films is because it created an experience that people authentically wanted to be a part of. Not only did moviegoers feel compelled to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer in the theater, they felt compelled to do it during their shared opening weekend, and in many cases, on the same day. I am sure there were people who actually doubled the amount of films they had seen in a theater all year long by participating in back-to-back screenings of Barbie and Oppenheimer on Friday or Saturday.

To be clear, I’m not suggesting that this internet-born phenomenon was the only reason that these films were hits. Many factors contributed to their stellar box office performances such as the fact that Christopher Nolan and Greta Gerwig both belong to a small group of filmmakers whose names carry weight with mainstream ticket buyers, some of the most bankable movie stars in the industry appearing in these two films, the extensive marketing campaigns that Warner Bros. and Universal did implement, the films being built around recognizable IP but not being franchise sequels or IP that moviegoers have seen countless times before, and perhaps most importantly, the fact that Barbie and Oppenheimer are both great films.

If Gerwig’s film had came out in June and Nolan’s in October, they still would have been successful at the box office. But, I strongly believe they would not have been as successful as they were this past weekend. In fact, according to the National Association of Theater Owners, approximately 200,000 people purchased tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer as a double feature.

The one problem with the success that Barbenheimer achieved is that it very easily could cause studios to learn the wrong lesson. It is not hard for me to imagine studio executives seeing the weekend success of these two films and thinking to themselves something idiotic along the lines of “memes are the future of movie marketing.” If anyone needs a reminder of how embarrassing it can be when studios try to cash in on memes and internet trends, look no further than the Morbius debacle from last year.

For those who don’t remember, Morbius was a Jared Leto led comic book film which bombed at the box office. Months after its release though, it generated a lot of memes from social media users who were ironically praising the film. This led Sony, the studio which distributed the film, to see that a lot of people were talking about their movie on the internet—and they believed the smart thing to do was to capitalize on this by re-releasing Morbius in theaters. They were wrong. The film made about $280 per theater during its re-release and led to media outlets reporting that it had now bombed twice. Stories like this, as hilarious as they may be, are why I pray that the Barbenheimer success does not lead to a world where films are marketed using “quirky internet content” dreamt up by out-of-touch marketing executives.

The takeaway needs to be that this weekend all of us, including the studios, saw moviegoers go to the cinema and collectively take part in something because they were genuinely excited to do so. The problem that faces the studios is that it’s difficult to recreate something like that, given the fact that movies rarely take command of our culture anymore due to the abundance of easily accessible entertainment options. Personally, I don’t know the answer needed to solve that specific problem. However, I believe the Barbenheimer success proves that there are potential answers out there. And while I don’t think this exact cultural event can ever be replicated, it should be used as a way to understand what makes people show up to the movie theater in 2023.