Before there was Barbenheimer: 17 other memorable movie matchups
The Barbie-Oppenheimer face-off has us thinking about other legendary, and sometimes laughable, box office battles
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July 21, 2023 will go down in history as the day of Barbenheimer–and we’re here for it. In short, the date represents the greatest current example of Hollywood counterprogramming, with the four-quadrant Barbie and the one-quadrant Oppenheimer opening on the same day. In a perfect world, both high-profile and expensive films will find an audience … maybe even the same audience. Indeed, more than 20,000 AMC moviegoers have already purchased tickets to watch Greta Gerwig’s Margot Robbie-Ryan Gosling comedy and Christopher Nolan’s Cillian Murphy-Matt Damon A-bomb drama back to back. Adding to the fun, talent from both films have taken to social media to support each other’s projects, and even Tom Cruise got in on the action, too.
All of which got us wondering about other times when of two very different films opened on the same day. There are plenty of examples in Hollywood history. Sometimes it was a brave little movie that refused to be cowed by an oncoming blockbuster. Other times it was an odd couple match-up that just made us chuckle. So check out our chronological list, and please note that we’re only considering films released in the past 50 years, because that’s a nice round number and, hey, we had to draw the line somewhere.
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Man, this is certainly a way to court that Google algorithm.
Tell me you haven’t seen Evil Dead II without telling me you haven’t seen Evil Dead II. You could have even gone to Josh Modell’s 2008 review from the “Better Late Than Never” series, which is linked in the damn slideshow, to discover that, quote, “What I apparently failed to realize after years of prodding is that Evil Dead II is, in fact, a comedy. Not a horror-comedy, but a flat-out comedy that happens to live in a world of blood and monsters.”
Scratch that, the Michael Mann Heat came out in 1995, this is the one with Burt Reynolds lol
Yeah, I saw that twitter thread too.
As did The Guardian.
https://www.theguardian.com/film/2023/jul/18/barbie-oppenheimer-movies-same-release-date-edited—oppenheimer-movies-released-same-day-box-office-greta-gerwig-christopher-nolanbarbie-oppenheimer-movies-same-release-date-edited-
I saw the Barbie trailer, and I saw the Oppenheimer trailer. #TeamOppenheimer. You can have Barbie. Go nuts. No disrespect but no thanks.
I haven’t yet bought tickets, but will almost certainly see both. I do know people who plan to do the double-feature thing.
I saw both (Oppenheimer, about 1 hour break then Barbie) and enjoyed both of them immensely!
at this point I’m so sick of the hype I’m passing on both of them.
Every scrap of promotional material for Barbie has been so cringey that I honestly can’t imagine liking the film, but hey, when it comes to Tubi, I’ll give it a shot.Oppenheimer? Might be the film to get me back in a theater.
Saying this as a true fan of Die Hard, it makes me happy to learn that Fish Called Wanda was the higher-grossing film (international market, obviously, but still).
“Memorable” is a very strong word for the headline. This is just trivia.
No The Devil Wears Prada vs. Superman Returns? Dorky preteen me made a lot of pretend money betting on Prada in the Hollywood Stock Exchange game (also on shorting Kevin Spacey, though that did over a decade to finally pay off).
A Fish Called Wanda feels under-remembered these days. If you haven’t seen it, go watch it.That said, some of these match ups seem to be stretching the word “memorable.”
Spot on. Nobody gave a shit about Rocky 5 coming out.
The weirdest on the list was The Matrix vs Ten things I hate about you. Because neither was highly anticipated. This was when the end of March was still where Hollywood put movies they didn’t have confidence in. The Matrix releasing in March is one of the reason that studios started moving up blockbuster season to the point where now, only January is true Hollywood no mans land
no joke but I actually saw both of those on the same day, plus Analyze This. I was movie-hopping between theaters as a teen and evidently not very discriminating..
Matrix opened in March? I have a pretty distinct memory of my friend seeing it in the theater over summer break and raving about it. I guess that’s not really surprising for 1999, but it’s weird to think of a movie spending more than two months in theaters.
I remember catching a late night screening of the Matrix(which had to be my fourth or fifth time seeing it) in August and it still was in a first run theater. The movies had legs. It didn’t hurt it that studios were absolutely paranoid about Episode 1 dominating the summer box office so May and June were not full of many blockbuster movies and the “big” July movie was Wild Wild West which flopped super hard.
I believe it was yoinked from theaters shortly after release because some media outlets were blaming The Matrix for the Columbine shootings. Once things settled down (read: once our goldfish brains moved on from caring about that particular shooting) the movie was re-released later in the summer.
Oh, yes, that’s definitely a weirder thing to choose to write about than Die Hard 3 and(checks notes to get name right) Forget Paris.
I love Fish Called Wanda, but never woulda guess that it out-grossed Die Hard.
Internationally, I’m less surprised just because the international market was very different back then. But I also seem to remember expectations being low for Die Hard so the idea that it was a huge match up that people were anticipating…maybe not.
You’re the vulgarian, you FUCK!
I forgot for a second what some of my recent comments had been and seeing this in my notifications I was like “wait a second?” hahah
I thought it was overrated when it came out. I found it messy and I thought that it got a lot of praise due to love and nostalgia for John Cleese. Nothing against Jamie Lee, though. She was fine in that movie. I also thought Roger Rabbit was overrated that very same summer. I guess I was still enjoying the high that was the summer of ‘87: The Untouchables, Predator, The Living Daylights, Dirty Dancing, Spaceballs.
A Fish Called Wanda is one of my favourite comedies ever. Everything is just perfect in that movie.
Watched it a few weeks ago and it was a lot more tame than I remember. Nice little movie though, and I’m still impressed they got it made.Convinced drugs were involved though. A lot of drugs.
I think you had a lot of positive working parts that helped get it made – You had John Cleese and Michael Palin back together. You had Kevin Kline and Jamie Lee Curtis who were both on pretty hot streaks in the 80s. It was cheap to make on top of it.It does highlight how much theaters have changed, though. It stayed in theaters forever, not hitting #1 until it had been released in the US for 6 weeks.
That is insane.I remember seeing it in theater as a kid when it came out, a friend’s parents took us as we all thought it was a movie about a mermaid. Had no idea what was going on but remember still liking it just because Kevin Kline was so nuts.That summer also saw Big, Who Framed Roger Rabbit, Die Hard, and Midnight Run, all in the same theater. Could have sworn Lethal Weapon 2 was that summer but I guess it was a year later.
Convinced drugs were involved though. A lot of drugs.To be fair, that’s literally every single movie.
It’s a great movie. But it’s not the greatest Christmas movie of all time like Die Hard is.
1989, Batman was everywhere. My brother and I saw it so many times we had every line memorized, and we wore out the VHS tape and the cassette the soundtrack was on when they finally came home. I still unabashedly love that movie.But, Honey I Shrunk the Kids was memorable for me too-because it was the last drive in movie I ever saw. A year later they tore down the drive in in my home city, and I doubt I will see a movie in another one for the rest of my life. I am not longing for the experience or anything, but there was something cool and old fashioned about watching a movie from the car.
That year was wild as a kid. Batman, The Last Crusade, Ghostbusters 2, etc
Absolutely!. Last Crusade might be my favorite Indy movie (as much as I love Raiders) because seeing it in the theater was such a great time. And I also saw Ghostbusters 2 at the drive in that same summer! 12 year old me is still pissed about how bad that movie was………
The next logical step in all these would have been to combine movies. I want to see James Bond chasing a CGI penguin through that parkour scene in Casino Royale.
$600MM++ for Momma Mia? The hell??
Lotta bastards with daddy issues out, it seems.
Y’all forgot the most notorious example – My Neighbor Totoro and Grave of the Fireflies premiered on the same day (April 16, 1988) as a double-feature.
I always wonder which one was showed first.
The first half of Grave of The Fireflies, all of Totoro, then the second half of Grave of The Fireflies.
It depended on which theater you went to.
Apparently, they realized that the only viable method was showing Fireflies first, because Totoro would serve as a comforting balm after being emotionally wrecked.Whereas the reverse order would just cause people to leave once things got dark.
As a double feature, it isn’t a competition.
How can anyone create a listicle like this and not mention Star Wars I: The Phantom Menace vs. The Love Letter?Back in 1999, we were on tenterhooks waiting to see which of those two movies would win the box office. For a while it was neck and neck until (spoiler) The Phantom Menace eked out a slight win. Which is one of those crazy facts that people fail to realize, given how culturally dominant The Love Letter has been for coming on a quarter century now. But ask an AV Club writer, and it’s as if none of that ever happened. Crazy.
I consider the most famous duo Independence Day and Phenomenon, each grossing $100M+.
Still can’t believe “Blade Runner” and “The Thing” were released on the same day in 1982.And that “Can’t Stop the Music” opened the same day as “The Blues Brothers.”
I can beat that.Ghostbusters and Gremlins.
I think it’s hilarious that films about an historical science revolution and an historical fictional IP have mashed up to draw attention from a science-fiction site. But genre breaking seems to be built in.It was a little weird to see the Barbie Kubrickesque ad. To associate a female figure who could be and do anything (including go into space) with science-fiction felt a little regressive. Funny, but regressive. But maybe that’s splitting doll hairs. She has been both lauded as a figure of female empowerment and demonized for her over-idealized body image, so has always embodied a kind of Heisenbergian dissonance.The director of Barbie says the movie can both be a thing and subvert the thing. That may be going one dissonance too far. But I am curious to see it attempted.
Heat is a “semi-classic”?? WTF, it’s Michael Mann’s masterpiece!
Was that shot with Anakin hanging off the side of that…whatever…in the movie?
The Dark Knight vs Mama Mia is the only one on here I think compares to “Barbenheimer” as a big zeitgeist-y showdown. The rest are just making me laugh. (Although I can speak to being taken to Honey I Shrunk the Kids instead of Batman, and not speaking to my parents for days.)
Amazingly, CATS was the better film of its matchup. Ultimately less successful financially, but it’s the one of the two I would watch again.
I’d add Last Action Hero vs Jurassic Park in 1993 to the list. Both were marketed as blockbuster event films with the accompanying merchandising and hype. The strategy to pit LAH against JP backfired, and LAH majorly underperformed and was critically derided. Check out Nick de Semlyn’s book ‘Last Action Heroes’ for a rundown of the whole debacle.
Shit, they even mocked LAH in The Lost World.
I love how you talk about The Matrix vs 10 Things I Hate About You but include a trailer for Matrix Resurrections.
I thought I did this once. On August 24 1990 I saw Flatliners in Wellfleet MA and then a midnight screening of Darkman in Provincetown, where the audience commentary and laughter was both campy and infectious. But then I looked up the release dates. Flatliners came out 2 weeks before Darkman. Still, a good pairing.
This whole thing feels like it was written with AI
These are not “memorable matchups” or matchups at all, just random pairs of movies that came out at the same time.
I no longer have the ability to star any posts in Chrome nor Edge.For the last year every time I gave a star, it immediately disappeared, but now I can’t even give one at all. What the hell, Kinja?