AMC says more than 20,000 moviegoers are doing the “Barbenheimer” double feature
Double feature summer begins on July 21 with Oppenheimer and Barbie
Aux News Greta Gerwig
Who wouldn’t want to chase the bleak, existential crisis of Barbie with a little nuclear holocaust? The world is ready for it.
After a decade of doomscrolling that flattened the world’s horrors into mundanity, placing the rise of fascism, global pandemic, and near-constant climate catastrophe on the same newsfeed as TikTokers lapping up fake ice cream for react emojis, audiences are ready for a double feature of Greta Gerwig’s cheerfully-pink Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s unsettlingly-white Oppenheimer. Surprisingly, that excitement is translating into actual ticket sales.
Unlike the misbegotten meme magic of Morbius, which delivered the vampiric supervillain, but not audiences, into multiplexes twice within a few months, the Barbenheimer meme is sending people to AMC theaters, where, somehow, heartbreak and radiation poisoning feel good. Per The Hollywood Reporter, AMC says that tens of thousands of moviegoers have already secured tickets for the unofficial double feature. “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,” Elizabeth Frank, executive vp worldwide programming & chief content officer of AMC Theatres, said in a statement.
The groundswell of Barbenheimer memes and potential ticket buyers proudly and heroically proclaiming that they would be watching both films in a single 24-hour period has become a softball talking point on both films’ press tours. Even the cast of a movie about the creation of an explosive that killed more than 150,000 civilians, leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and spawned the Cold War has Barbie fever. “I can’t wait to see Barbie,” says Cillian Murphy, who plays the man potentially responsible for the end of all life on Earth. “I love Margot Robbie, I love Ryan Gosling. My advice would be for people to go see both on the same day.”
The double feature has already gone nuclear online. Last month, Tom Cruise shared a photo of himself and Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie holding tickets to Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, Barbie, and Oppenheimer. “I love a double feature, and it doesn’t get more explosive (or more pink) than one with Oppenheimer and Barbie,” read the caption to Cruise’s tweet. But apparently, the Barbenheimer challenge is one stunt Cruise won’t do himself. He later clarified that he’d see Oppenheimer Friday and Barbie Saturday.
However, Cruise’s post inspired Gerwig and the titular Barbie Margot Robbie to accept his mission, posting ticket shots of their own. Still, despite Gerwig and Robbie rizzying up baby Opp, Nolan seems unlikely to play along. The director of a movie about a guy who has now become death, the destroyer of worlds, has more important things to do, like figuring out how to get all 11 miles of Oppenheimer onto projectors.
34 Comments
When Barbie and Oppenheimer meet they annihilate each other, releasing clickbait.
I’m obviously going to do the double feature, but the real question is, which one should I see first?
The rule is Oppenheimer because it’ll be more depressing so Barbie can fix that. Its like watching Grave of the Fireflies then My Neighbor Totoro.
My Neighbor Totoro is a stealth sequel to Grave of the Fireflies?
They were a double feature in Japan (where they were both intended for all ages). I’m pretty sure Totoro is set in the 50s, so the kids could’ve all been cousins.
That’s my plan for it. Local theater in my neighborhood is showing both and I plan on waking up with a stark realizations of mankind’s capacity for self destruction, then go walk my dogs and have lunch, then come right back for pink-coated mild existentialism with an upbeat message about self-love and Gerwig-twee humor. Balance!
Really easy for me. Going to the Barbie preview screening on the 19th as Oppenheimer and as Ken for the Oppenheimer premiere on the 20th.
Wearing this for my Ken costume:https://www.redbubble.com/i/top/Barbenheimer-by-erikveland/148120825.6AQD3
I’m seeing Barbie first because my kid is going, and my parents are picking her up between movies.
i’m doing barbie at 2pm, oppenheimer at 6:40, some kinda meal in between (linner? dunch?)
Wonder how the rest of the Summer’s films will do with the upcoming SAG-AFTRA strike.
I really want to know what Christopher Nolan thinks of this. Obviously Greta Gerwig finds it funny, but Nolan strikes me as a hyper serious kind of guy and might not remotely get it.That, and spare a thought for the real J. Robert Oppenheimer, in heaven (or hell) confused that a movie about his life is being compared to those plastic dolls his daughter was probably playing with.
Nolan a serious guy? I for one found Interstellar hilarious.
He played it seriously although I wish he hadn’t. It was beyond sappy by the end.
“The equation….for gravity… is LOVE!”
Computer: ‘It is impossible.’Pilot/engineer: ‘It is necessary!’Makes you wonder why test pilots ever crash. All they need to do is explain to the jet that it’s necessary to get out of its flat spin!
I forgot how stupid that movie was. Conceptually. Why didn’t they first try the planet where time moves really slow instead of the planet where time moves really fast?
I think he has more of a sense of humour than people give him credit for – there were some nice sly gags in the Batman films – and I imagine he is at least somewhat amused by Barbenheimer.
According to Insider, he’s big mad: https://www.insider.com/christopher-nolan-warner-bros-feud-oppenheimer-barbie-2023-7
I would be really surprised if this meme wasn’t a product of the two marketing teams.
i think anything getting assses in movie theatre seats is something nolan is down for. he doesn’t seem hyper serious as much as just…heavily on the spectrum haha.
He’s pissed, mostly because he left WB over their treatment of Tenet (which he persists in being a whiny baby about given the state of the world at the time) and he sees Barbie’s scheduling as their retaliation against him (and knowing current WB management, he could very well be right).
I’m hoping to score a perfect 10 on my reverse-Barbenheimer
I’m visiting friends in Tennessee the week these two films come out. My plan is to see Barbie first, because they’re eager to see it, and then on my way home I’m making a stopover in Nashville to see Oppenheimer at one of the few theaters that will be showing the film in Imax 15/70mm (the Regal Opry Mills, FYI).
Of course Cruise is not seeing both in the same day. He’d probably have to run between screenings, and he hates to do that.
Back in 1999, I ran from Election to The Sixth Sense to The Blair Witch Project in three adjacent cinemas whose showtimes were staggered just enough to pull it off. Good times!
i did district 9, funny people and then immediately met my friends in line for inglourious basterds’ opening. big day at the movies.
Well that’s maybe about $400,000 each.
Thursday night, 4:20 Barbie, 6:45 Oppenheimer, can’t fucking wait!!!
Wait, there’s a BARBIE movie? First I’m hearing of it! I have been in a coma for 5 years until 1 minute ago
Boom. Amazing joke. Cool guy, alert!
Meanwhile, serial baby Nolan is doing yet another temper tantrum because another movie has the audacity to compete against his cinematic greatness.He’s a gifted director, to be sure. But honestly, he’s also a fucking prat.
much like ‘kids wearing suits to minions’ was a fun thing, this is also a fun thing. the public likes doing fun things!
I bought tickets for both here in Scotland. I’m more excited for Barbie though.