The pop culture zeitgeist during the summer of 2023 was captured by two films simultaneously -- Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer. Due to them releasing the same weekend, it became a double-feature of sorts for fans attending the movies. From promotional material to interviews it was the event of the summer. While Barbie grossed over $1.4 billion at the global box office making it the highest-grossing film of 2023 and the 14th highest of all time, Oppenheimer brought in $951.4 million, making it the third highest-grossing film of 2023 behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie which earned $1.34 billion worldwide.
However for some films, a straight to streaming approach has proven successful in the past. Take Netflix's The Gray Man as an example. Although it didn't receive the best reviews, it became Netflix's #1 movie of the year for 2022 and was greenlit for a sequel shortly after its release. The sequel from The Russo Brothers remains in active development. Although Martin Scorsese's The Irishman had a limited theatrical release, it's still estimated to have brought in $8 million in gross earnings. As such, Netflix Co-CEO Ted Sarandos believes that if Barbie and Oppenheimer had been released on Netflix, it would have been just as big.
"There's no reason to believe that the movie itself is better in any size of screen for all people," he told The New York Times. "My son's an editor, he watched 'Lawrence of Arabia' on his phone."
The Commercial Success of Barbenheimer
In 2023, Barbie co-writer Noah Baumbach revealed that he wasn't initially interested in taking part in a project about Barbie despite Gerwig's insistence. He believed it to be a "terrible idea" when Gerwig signed him up for it, however, after he read a few pages of the script, he began to realize what it was about and what it could be. "It was Barbie waking up in her Dreamhouse and coming out to her backyard and meeting somebody who was sick and dying," Baumbach said. "I read these pages and I thought, 'I understand now what this is.' ... The movie is about embracing your mortality and about the mess of it all, so it was exciting."
Both Barbie and Oppenheimer have since won several awards, including an Oscars sweep for Oppenheimer with Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor, Best Picture, Best Director. Despite Barbie's Oscars snub which upset a lot of fans, Billie Eilish and Finneas did walk away with an award for Best Song for "What Was I Made For." It has also found great success at both the Grammys and the People's Choice Awards.
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