'Oppenheimer', 'Barbie' bring huge relief to movie theatres! Nearly 2 million tickets sold over the weekend

In an epic clash between Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy, the theatre owners have won! The emergence of OTT (over-the-top) platforms like Netflix, Amazon Prime Video and Disney+ Hotstar had slowed the growth of the cinema business, especially after the pandemic. But the two big-ticket releases seemed to be successful in getting Indians back to the big screen over the weekend.

According to ticketing platform BookMyShow, 1.4 million tickets were booked for Oppenheimer on the platform so far, and there has been a strong platform contribution of 74 per cent to the overall box office revenue collection for the film. The platform also said that over 500,000 tickets have been sold for Barbie with an equally mammoth contribution of 70 per cent by BookMyShow to the overall box office revenue collection for India.

"Both films are off to a skyrocketing start right off the bat. With Oppenheimer and Barbie finally releasing across screens nationwide, it’s been a clash of the titans at the box office with both films exhibiting sheer cinematic brilliance and fans flocking to theatres for the big screen extravaganza," Ashish Saksena, COO - Cinemas, BookMyShow, said.

It said that cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR and Chennai continue to lead in ticket sales on BookMyShow, while cinephiles across India have been showing mammoth interest for both films, where cities like Pune, Kochi and Ahmedabad are in the lead when it comes to non-metros. "The absolute excitement to catch these films on the big screen and in the most immersive format of IMAX is also evident in non-typical show timings of 12 AM and even 3 AM shows running packed on BookMyShow," Saksena adds.

Interestingly, both films have attracted a significant number of cinephiles booking tickets for both, despite their contrasting themes and a substantial portion of the audience has planned their watching schedule for both movies on the same day.  "The prospects for these two films seem very promising over the course of the next week, riding on massive hype as they are expected to draw hordes of audiences to theatres across different formats, providing the ultimate big-screen experience," he said.

According to estimates, Barbie reported a worldwide total collection of $337 million (The movie was made at a budget of $145 million). Outside of North America, the top markets for the film were the United Kingdom with $22.9 million, Mexico with $22.3 million, Brazil with $15.9 million, Australia with $14.6 million, Spain with $9.9 million, France with $9.8 million and China with $8.2 million.

Meanwhile, Nolan’s historical drama made a worldwide debut of $174 million. Adapted from the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus, the $100 million-budgeted movie earned well beyond the U.S. and Canada, with its highest grossing territories being the U.K. ($9.3 million), India ($7 million), France ($6.4 million) and Germany ($6.4 million).