The Hollywood Reporter
“It’s all love — double up, double up twice,” Barbie director Greta Gerwig told The Hollywood Reporter on Sunday when asked about her film opening July 21, the same day as Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer.
Well, according to AMC, around 20,000 of its Stubs members are planning on doing just that. Stubs is the theater chain’s monthly rewards program, which ranges in price from free to $24 a month, and at its high end allows members to see three films a week at no extra charge.
“That more than 20,000 moviegoers have already made plans and purchased tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day is a great sign that the growing online conversation around seeing both of these incredible films is turning into ticket sales,” read a statement from Elizabeth Frank, executive vp worldwide programming & chief content officer of AMC Theatres.
Frank added that over the past three days, the theater chain saw a 33 percent increase in the number of guests choosing to create a same-day double feature for the Barbie–Oppenheimer showdown, which has inspired memes and one epic poster.
Oppenheimer is from Universal and filmmaker Christopher Nolan, while Barbie, in a bit of irony, hails from Warner Bros., Nolan’s former longtime studio home. It stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling.
Cillian Murphy, who plays physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer, the man considered the father of the atomic bomb, recently voiced his support for Barbie, telling the Barcelona-based newspaper La Vanguardia, “I can’t wait to see Barbie. I love Margot Robbie, I love Ryan Gosling. … My advice would be for people to go see both [Barbie and Oppenheimer], on the same day.”
Tracking gives Barbie the easy win over Oppenheimer opening weekend, though as an adult-skewing drama, Universal is hoping Nolan’s three-hour film has legs.
A previous version misstated that the low-end of the AMC Stubs program cost $15 a month, when in fact there is a free tier.
Source: Hollywood Reporter
