Oppenheimer Explodes Expectations With Astonishing $80 Million Opening Weekend
Oppenheimer Explodes Expectations With Astonishing $80 Million Opening Weekend
The last time Christopher Nolan tried to save cinema, the results fell quite far short of the goal. His mind-bending sci-fi movie "Tenet" was one of the first big new releases when theaters tentatively reopened at the start of fall 2020, following the first wave of pandemic lockdowns. America wasn't ready; the film grossed just $58.5 million by the end of its domestic run, and a couple of months later hundreds of theaters reclosed overnight amid a surge of COVID-19 cases. While overseas ticket sales carried the movie to a worldwide total of $365.3 million, it wasn't the result that Nolan was hoping for.
After this weekend, however, Nolan can actually lay claim to some credit for saving cinema — though like the creation of the first atomic bomb, it's very much been a group effort. By teaming up with Greta Gerwig's "Barbie" for the bizarre cinematic event that has become known as "Barbenheimer," Nolan's biographical thriller "Oppenheimer" has helped give the box office its best weekend since the pandemic began.
Even with the building hype, analysts last week had "Oppenheimer" pegged for an opening weekend of somewhere between $40 million and $57 million. When opening day numbers came in on Saturday, the estimate for the weekend was $77 million. Now, Variety reports that "Oppenheimer" is looking at an astonishing $80.5 million debut, with 47 percent of that coming from premium large format ticket sales. The jumbo-sized 70mm IMAX print of "Oppenheimer" is showing in just 19 theaters across the United States, and those tickets are already sold out for weeks.
It's a similar situation across the globe. "Oppenheimer" has also grossed $93.7 million from international markets, with more than a third of that coming from IMAX showings. Here in the United Kingdom, a 4:20 a.m. 70mm IMAX screening at BFI London was sold out this morning, and the next available tickets — for showings on July 31 — will probably be gone by the time I've finished writing this article.
Source: /Film
