At the box office, Barbie and Oppenheimer had a successful first weekend.

Both films had huge Friday box office openings both domestically and internationally, grossing an estimated $465 million in total, which is unheard of in the movie industry.

Also Read: Sen. Ted Cruz calls Barbie a Chinese propaganda, social media reacts

Barbie, starring Ryan Gosling and Margot Robbie, won the top prize after grossing more than $150 million at the US box office and more than $300 million worldwide.

Barbie’s the biggest film opening ever with the exception of “The Avengers: Endgame,” released in 2019, which secured an eye-popping $1.2 billion worldwide.

On the other hand, Director Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer” landed in second place, taking in over $80 million domestically and $165 million globally, making it the third-strongest opening in history.

Due to the opening of two of the summer’s biggest blockbusters on Friday, movie theatres all around our region report significant increases in ticket sales, which may have a long-term effect on the theatres themselves.

Many people choose to watch both films on the same day, even though Oppenheimer is about creating the atomic bomb and Barbie is about, well, Barbie. ‘Barbenheimer’ is the name of the craze that is sweeping the Upstate and the rest of the nation.

Also Read: Is Greta Gerwig making Barbie 2? Everything you need to know about the Margot Robbie starrer sequel

AMC announced over two weeks ago that they had sold 20,000 tickets to viewers of both films in advance. Cineplex reported selling 345,000 presale tickets on Wednesday.

The weekend box office haul for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” in North America was an astounding $240 million. The weekend’s overall box office in North America hit a staggering $307 million, making it the biggest weekend since the post-pandemic era, with an additional $67 million from holdovers. This broke the previous record, which had been set on December 17–19, 2021, when “Spider-man: No Way Home” debuted with $260 million and earned a total of $284 million over the course of the weekend.

The “Barbenheimer” weekend currently ranks as the fourth-largest in North American history. Additionally, this past weekend was just the fourth time that the weekend box office topped the $300 million mark. The top rank still goes to the weekend of April 26–28, 2019, when “Avengers: Endgame” debuted to an astounding $358 million, helping to reach a $404 million weekend market total. This was the only weekend to date in which ticket sales went over $400 million.