Why Oppenheimer opened bigger than Barbie in India reversing global trend, and what Barbenheimer success means

Hollywood trendspotters in India have over the past weekend been dissecting how Oppenheimer saw a bigger opening in our country than Barbie, in what was clearly a reversal of the global box office performance of these films. Both films released on the same day, in what is popularly being referred to as the Barbenheimer weekend, and Deadline reports Barbie raked in $356.3 million globally till Monday as compared to the $180.4-million collection of Oppenheimer over the same period.

It is too early to say if the domestic market in India will ultimately follow international trends for these two films, but right now winds of the ‘desi’ box office seem to be blowing in the direction of Oppenheimer. Estimated figures at the time of publishing on the trade website koimoi.com pin the domestic collection of Oppenheimer at Rs 49.50 crore till Monday while the box office intake for Barbie stands at Rs 18.50 over the same period.

Why did Oppenheimer see a bigger opening in India compared to Barbie? The simple answer is the film released across a larger number of screens — around 1,923 including IMAX screens as compared to an estimated 868 screens being allotted to Barbie in the country.

Box office logistics, however, can be far more complex than the mathematics of screen count. A large number of screens does not automatically fetch a mega opening, a fact frequently evidenced by the losses that star-studded productions suffer in Bollywood. Importantly, managing to get a bigger screen count on the same Friday as Barbie, a feel-good comedy about a popular toy toplined by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is itself proof that the sombre biopic Oppenheimer always had a headstart in the Indian market.

Oppenheimer enjoyed a headstart in India because the film was smartly marketed around the one thing that mattered most when it came to creating brand awareness — it is the new film of director Christopher Nolan. While many Hollywood lovers in India may or may not be familiar with Nolan’s experimental early thrillers Following and Memento, the filmmaker sure has created a loyal fan base since the time he entered a more mainstream zone in 2002 with the Al Pacino-Robin Williams psychological thriller Insomnia. Over the decades, the filmmaker’s unconventional storytelling approach, balanced by an ability to infuse the quirk factor to the most done-to-death of genres, has extended from the superhero movie (The Dark Knight trilogy) and the sci-fi thriller (Inception, Interstellar and Tenet) to the war drama (Dunkirk) and the suspense drama (The Prestige).

Nolan’s latest adapts Kai Bird and Martin J. Sherwin’s Pulitzer Prize-winning book titled American Prometheus, and features Cillian Murphy as the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer, widely known as the Father of the Atomic Bomb. The film scores with the quirky casting of several top names including Robert Downey Jr., Matt Damon, Josh Hartnett, Rami Malek, Casey Affleck and Kenneth Branagh in interesting cameos. The filmmaker’s slant at surprising with execution of content continues in his new film. With Oppenheimer, he reinvents the biopic as a political discourse and, like all his past films, unfolds the narrative in layers. His new film serves a scathing socio-political comment about the US stance over communists in the post-World War II scenario, during the days leading up to the atomic bombs being dropped on Japan’s Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Yet, despite the dark text, Nolan’s screenplay never lets go of the element of tension and suspense while building up the drama through a three-hour-plus runtime.

Which brings us to Barbie, Greta Gerwig’s astonishing new directorial feat that ticks all the boxes as Oppenheimer in terms of setting up cinematic reinvention, delivering subversive comment and regaling with mainstream entertainment. Globally, the super opening of Gerwig’s film is a recognition of the fact that the film has scored in the way it intended to. In India, till post-release reviews and social media reactions arrived, most among the first-week audiences seemed to be driven by the misconception that Barbie was nothing beyond a standard fantasy flick based on a toy, just as The Lego Movie or G.I. Joe was. Gerwig’s filmography may boast of critically acclaimed fare as Lady Bird and Little Women, but she has so far lacked Nolan’s cult fan base in India.

Many trade experts feel Barbie could pick up at the Indian box office given the film’s star cast and feel-good fantasy comedy element that buoy the screenplay’s deeper message. Hindrance, however, could come in the form of Karan Johar’s romantic comedy Rocky Aur Rani Kii Prem Kahaani starring Alia Bhatt and Ranveer Singh, slated for a 28 July release.

Worldwide, though, these two very unlikely films continue smashing records and creating a socio-political impact at the same time. While Barbie strikes serious conversation on a subject deemed frivolous, Oppenheimer takes a sombre subject and turns it into intriguing drama.

The twin success of Barbenheimer, by every yardstick, underlines triumph of the unconventional filmmaker’s vision over the glamour of stardom, most obviously evidenced by the fact that the Tom Cruise-starrer Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One, after a blockbuster opening last week, saw a 64 per cent drop in its second weekend. This is a glaring decline for a film that belongs to one of the most endearing franchises in the history of Hollywood and which top-bills Tom Cruise, widely regarded as the biggest film star in the world right now.

Hollywood’s past weekend by every yardstick has been one of directors’ triumph. Gerwig, like Nolan, represents a brave new breed of filmmakers in new-age Hollywood that loves to create and enthral by provoking and bending the rules. The success of Oppenheimer and Barbie all over the world testifies that disruptive creativity is the way to go for filmmakers, more than expensive VFX or top stars. In a world where audience taste is rapidly shifting, the similar success stories of these two absolutely dissimilar films hint at exciting trends that may emerge within the space of commercial cinema.

Vinayak Chakravorty is a critic, columnist and journalist who loves to write on popular culture.