Barbie and Oppenheimer returned to the front of the pack this weekend, while last week’s newbies took a bit of a dive. This week’s new film may have wished it took the Gran Turismo route and pushed back to Aug. 25. However, new records have been forged and the box office had its second best August week post-pandemic. Kids are going back to school this week and the autumn fade is coming soon, so let’s continue appreciating some of these numbers as we wind the summer down.
Barbie is No. 1 again for the fourth straight weekend. It’s only the third film of 2023 to achieve that after the continuation of Avatar: The Way of Water’s run and The Super Mario Bros. Movie — we’ll get to the latter in a second because congratulations are in order. Greta Gerwig now stands alone with the highest-grossing film ever directed by a woman both domestically and worldwide with over $1.18 billion — the 25th highest ever. In only four weeks. The film’s $33.7 million ranks as the eighth-best fourth weekend in history, though it is here we see the films it is chasing push back a little.
Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer took the smallest drop in the top five this week (35.4%), down to $18.8 million, which was good enough for second place. That brings the three-hour biopic’s total to over $264 million, making it the ninth-highest gross for an R-rated film and the 15th best 24-day total for a film released in July, putting it roughly $32 million off the pace of The Secret Life of Pets. Its connection with the animated film is a similar fourth weekend of $18.9 million and could suggest a path as high as $340 million domestic. Oppenheimer’s weekend was about $300,000 higher than Inception’s fourth — a film it is outpacing by $37 million. The film still looks to be in line with last week’s estimate of $310-330 million, while it is about to pass $650 million worldwide.
It’s never a good day to be Dracula, but the vampire in full bat-creature mode within The Last Voyage of the Demeter will not have much daylight for its theatrical run after earning just $6.5 million this weekend. Universal dropped $65 million on its previous revisionist Nosferatu film Renfield earlier this year and only saw a $26.3 million worldwide return. Now its Captain’s Log fan fiction from Bram Stoker’s novel with a Rotten Tomatometer score is not going to do much better on a $45 million budget. Last year’s August vampire tale, The Invitation, opened to $6.8 million and reached $25.1 million. Meg 2 is not exactly tearing it up in theaters, but rescheduling this one from late January this year was likely not the best play.
Full Story via Rotten Tomatoes
