Barbenheimer Effect: Will The Release Of Barbie And Oppenheimer Come To The Rescue of The Indian Box Office?

Barbie and Oppenheimer are the most anticipated movies in India right now. There is massive excitement among the Indian audience for Barbenheimer, both releasing on July 21. While the queen of dramas meets the lord of death this weekend, it will be fun to watch how this pans out for the Indian box office which is facing a dry spell for over a few quarters. 

Planning to cash on the global Barbenheimer craze, the movie theatres set up countdown timers for the first time at several locations and started screening ‘Oppenheimer’ at midnight on Friday, the day of its US release date. 

For the opening weekend, PVR-Inox will run an ‘Oppenheimer’ movie marathon, with back-to-back shows over a 24-hour period. The amazing part comes here, combined advance sales for Barbenheimer for Friday to Sunday was 900,000 tickets, the highest for any film outside the Marvel or Avatar series.

The Indian box office is in a soup as films with fat budgets and expectations are bombing the past few seasons. Let’s get a more detailed view of what’s the hype of Barbenheimer and whether is it going to help the box office swim out of troubled waters.

What’s The Big Deal With Barbie And Oppenheimer?

Gerwig’s Barbie, starting Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling among others, is based on one of the most famous cultural icons, the Barbie fashion doll, which shaped the dreams of millions of children. Barbie will catch eyeballs with the nostalgia of our childhood when Barbie use to rule the kid's world. Barbie is considered to be the unparallel queen of fashion and the release of the film will fuel the Barbie fashion trends. 

Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy alongside an ensemble star cast, tells the story of J Robert Oppenheimer, the man who is credited for the innovation of the atomic bomb as a part of the Manhattan Project. On top of the subject, it is a Christopher Nolan film and we all know he gives an experience like no other. Unlike in Barbie’s case, here the filmmaker is the cause of the frenzy for Oppenheimer. People familiar with Nolan’s piece of work know that he likes to keep things real. The frenzy among the audience is on how Nolan has recreated the Trinity test (the first-ever detonation of a nuclear weapon) in the film. Nolan has revealed that Oppenheimer has no VFX involved and he has shot the film on IMAX film cameras. 

What Does It Mean For Box Office?

Box Office is facing the heat of weak shows for quite a few quarters now. Market watchers tracking the sector noted that net box office collection (NBOC) for Bollywood and Hollywood genres, excluding regional movies, saw a decline of 14.6 per cent YoY to Rs 920 crore in 1QFY24. If you go by the books, The Kerala Story turned out a sleeper hit with Rs 200 crore in its kitty, subdued collections from movies like ‘Kisi Ka Bhai Kisi Ki Jaan’ Rs 110 crore and ‘Adipurush’ Rs 280 crore impacted overall performance for the quarter. 

The Adipurush’s collections were sub-par, given the budget and huge expectations surrounding the movie that had a pan-India appeal. 

The subdued performance of Hindi films with big budget has dragged down the box office, Q1FY24 is been seen as a weak quarter as no film have done well at the box office except The Kerala Story and selected Hollywood movie like Fast X. It is expected that theatres like PVR-Inox will also see a revenue slip due to the underperformance of the films. 

The data of NBOC clearly shows that there has been no significant growth in the FY23 quarters as well. From Rs 11.2 billion in the first quarter of FY23, the collections declined to Rs 9.0 billion in the last quarter leading to worries about sluggish growth in footfall.

What Do Experts Say About The Drop-In Box Office Numbers?

The market expects to believe that the recent trends clearly show that the audience is looking for substantial-quality content and not just star power. Jinesh Joshi, Research Analyst at Prabhudas Lilladher Pvt Ltd, said, “Only star power and hype won't be enough for multiplexes to attract high footfalls, as the proliferation of OTT has changed the game. The hype around a movie can give a good opening weekend but eventually, it's the content that needs to deliver.” While Barbie is dominating the US box office, Oppenheimer’s appeal in India is soaring, Oppenheimer sold around 2 lakh tickets in advance for Friday and Barbie sold 80,000. “We believe that with the strong content pipeline, like Oppenheimer and Barbie, the fortunes for box office might be good this quarter.” Jinesh Joshi added. 

Experts even believe that ‘word of mouth’ is also helping in creating the lost momentum. Shobit Singhal, Research Analyst at Anand Rathi Shares and Stock Brokers, said, “If a movie is able to get praise from people, then the sky is the limit.” The buzz of Barbenheimer is all over social media but a PG-13 movie’s performance against an R-rated movie cannot be quantified.

Talking about the box office setback, Shobit Singhal added, “In the first quarter of FY24, some movies were not able to perform as expected which will have some bearing on the results of theatre chains. For example, PVR Inox's sequential growth in admissions will be lower than expected at 10 per cent in the last quarter. However, the content pipeline going forward is good, with Barbie and Oppenheimer expected to do good numbers.” 

How Much Believe Theatres And Booking Sites Have On Barbenheimer?

Oppenheimer has already sold over 800,000 tickets on BookMyShow, with cities like Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, and Chennai leading in ticket sales. Barbie’s captivating trailer, with its dark humor undertones, has won over many fans and it has already sold more than 250,000 tickets on BookMyShow, with cities like Mumbai, Bengaluru, Delhi-NCR, Hyderabad, and Chennai leading in ticket sales.

Ashish Saksena, COO – Cinemas at BookMyShow, said, “July has been filled with sheer cinematic brilliance with one fantastic release after another. It all started with Mission: Impossible - Dead Reckoning Part One (MI 7) setting the tone, followed by the captivating box-office showdown between Oppenheimer and Barbie.” 

Interestingly, both films have attracted a significant number of viewers booking tickets for both, despite their contrasting themes and a substantial portion of the audience plans to watch both movies on the same day. Ashish Saksena added, “Both films have garnered immense interest as they finally hit the screens after much anticipation.”

Sanjeev Kumar Bijli, executive director, of PVR INOX Limited, in an interview with Forbes India, said, “It’s an unusual face-off. We’ve known the phenomenon of two Hindi movies going head-to-head, but for two Hollywood films, of such different genres, to be so hotly anticipated in India is quite new.”

Will this ‘double-feature’ frenzy will support the Indian box office is yet to be seen but meanwhile, pick your outfits and book your double-features.