Joel M

Titanic was also a disaster movie with never before seen visual effects. Everyone, their parents and their grandparents went to see it. It's not even in the same ballpark with Twilight or huge romcoms like Pretty Woman or even Barbie.

I mean you can't compare their reception by their scores on imdb,letterboxd, RT (which are not that far anyway) like they are both superhero movies or animations. Everyone has them married in their head and they certainly have audience overlap because of Barbenheimer or because some people might genuinely interested in both outside of the meme but they 're very different movies. Barbie is easier both to rewatch and convince casual people that go once or twice a year to the movies to check out. So the potential audience is much bigger even with much bigger numbers. All you can get from the "word-of-mouth" indicators is that both movies have great reception. But otherwise is an apples to oranges comparison.

Because it had way more stuff going for it besides nostalgia.

The thing is a Pirate adventure always seemed like a very intriguing concept that Hollywood hadn't cracked for decades and barely tried to do after a few high profile disasters. Horror comedies have been done succesfully many times but most of the times from Ghostbusters and Gremlins to Scary Movie and Zombieland are leaning nastier/R-rated. They should have said fuck them kids and give it to Del Toro a decade ago when he wanted to do it.

according to my letterboxd I've only seen 40 movies from '93, which means might have to include Beethoven's 2nd and Dennis the Menace to make it to 30. but top-10 is easy 1.Dazed & Confused 2.Nightmare before Christmas 3.Naked 4.Remains of the Day 5.Jurrasic Park 6.The Piano 7.Carlito's Way 8.Age of Innocence 9.Groundhog Day 10.Sleepless in Seattle

There are probably several movies that have sold more tickets than Titanic. GWTW, Sound of Music, OG Star Wars possibly even E.T. I'm just saying Dr. Zhivago is probably not one of them because to arrive to that conclusion you have to assume it made all its money on 1965 and divide them by the avg. ticket price of that year. So ignoring big movies of the time had roadshow releases with 2x-3x bigger premium prices first and returned to theatres several times after their initial theatrical release with various ticket. It might have sold 80 or 90 or even 100 mil, but I highly doubt it sold 124. All we have from Dr. Zhivago is that it made 110mil in the US sometime before 1980 and that's it.

Zhivago was a humongous hit in its time and possibly second ony to Sound of Music in the 60s but those admissions are probably bogus like all the old jaggernauts admissions numbers. We'll never know when and at what prices they made all their money. Movies kept returning to theatres before the creation of home video because it was the only way to see them. Zhivago didn't made 110m in 1965, so I highly doubt it sold tickets on par with Titanic.

Data are iffy before Jaws but the line-up of record breakers from what I remember goes: -Gone with the Wind was #1 for over 2 decades through various re-releases -Sound of Music broke the record. -GWTW retook the record in late 60s from another massive re-release -Godfather took the record from GWTW and was later beaten by Jaws -The Exorcist and The Sting that released in late '73 and have bigger final totals than the Godfather I've never seen anywhere a claim that they actually ever took the record. So If/when they passed the Godfather, Jaws most likely had already passed them all so there was no record to be broken.

Bumping this because of Barbie's crazy over-performance: https://freecinema.gr/barbie-the-superhero-of-the-greek-summer-box-office/ https://freecinema.gr/greek-box-office-life-in-plastic-its-fantastic/ Opened last weekend to 72.072 admissions (biggest OW of the year) and rose +5% to 75.807 adm. this weekend for a running total of 206.936 admissions!!! Already beaten Mario for #1 of the year in 10 days and heading to well over double its current total. 400.000 admissions is a threshold for mega blockbusters here that only No Way Home (466.000) and Avatar 2 (425.000) have cleared post-pandemic. Barbie could theoreticaly beat both for biggest movie post-pandemic in Greece. While the numbers are not record breaking by themselves compared to pre-pandemic numbers (Greece theatrical market is still very slow in its recovery compared to most places) it's simply insane that is doing these numbers at the peak of the summer season. July 20 to August 20 is the worst period here to release a summer blockbuster because most people avoid traditional theatres and opt for open air summer theatres which are much fewer and have less screenings (only night screenings). Everything big that can't be released at the start of July at the latest (like MI7), gets bumped to late August when people start returning to traditional screens (Oppenheimer). Insane run so far.

I guess Spiderverse will just fall a bit short of 700m. I think a few weeks ago it looked like it will make it to 400m DOM but might struggle for 300m OS but the oppossite happened. Still a huge hit I'm not complaining, but I hoped it could pass Fast X worldwide.

Does this mean Oppenheimer gets to keep IMAX until the 25th?

No one is arguing that. People also watched the Dark Knight because it was Batman and Joker not because it was a Christopher Nolan. I think people mostly talking about future potential here, now that she had her huge mega hit with her name front and centre.

If your cult has millions upon millions of followers worldwide you just call it a religion.

Barbie should absolutely go for original screenplay and avoid the heavy competition. It's not based on any real source material, it's not a sequel and just uses the names of the toys. The likes of Milk, King's Speech and Green Book won original screenplay by adapting real peoples lives without using a written biography as a source. Barbie is certainly more original than them. This shouldn't even be a conversation.

Nolan ranking, before seeing Oppenheimer Interstellar Prestige TDK Memento Tenet Inception Dunkirk Batman Begins Insomnia TDKR Following

they should let it ride the wave until the oscars before they anounce any sequels.

Historic weekend all around. Happy for Nolan, Greta and THE CINEMA.

I agree about Oppenheimer but don't necessarily agree about Barbie. I understand the thinking that if Barbie had IMAX and free reign over the weekend would simply gross 20m more but at the same time who knows if it would have the exact same excitiment if not for Barbenheimer hype. This wasn't something that was slapped last minute for Oppenheimer to piggyback on Barbie's hype. It's been slowly building for over a year from movie focus online circles to the rest of the internet to traditional media the last few weeks giving a ton of free coverage to both movies for every piece of marketing they dropped. I'm not arguing here that Barbie will suddenly drop to 100m OW without the double bill. But maybe losing the amount of people that went to see it because of said hype would negate whatever advantage the extra screens and PLFs would give it and open at exactly the same numbers or even slightly lower than what it's doing right now.

Drop the director, drop the Ocean's lore (lol) and then yeah I would be pretty excited to see Robbie-Gosling doing a period piece heist rom com in the vein of to Catch a Thief.

DM3 already had dropped a lot in the US pre-pandemic, jumping back up tp 370m wasn't that expected.

Barbie was really fun but still bummed we are one of the few countries that didn't get the proper Barbenheimer event. Checking imdb and outside of UAE,Kuwait, Japan for Barbie and Vietnam,SK, Italy and Greece for Oppenheimer everywhere else they both released this week.

I liked it a lot and despite some minor reservations here and there it's pretty much a personal triumph for Gerwig because in the end it seems more unique and idiosyncrating than most movies of this size that have a brand to "service" behind them. There are inspired jabs at both Mattel and the compicated legacy of the Barbie brand, but at the same time nothing truly transgressive. Which I don't hold against the movie, I don't think Gerwig pull her punches more than anyone else that ever did a big IP movie. In the same way Margot Robbie's journey of self-discovery or America Ferrara's monologue can be absolutely heartfelt and emotional in the same movie that at some level is still about Mattel rebranding itself as something cooler than it actually is. Art and Commerce and all that stuff. Where the movie absolutely amazes though is the sheer craft behind it. The painted skies and plastic sets, the unexplained dream logic in which it operates, the way it travels between real and fantasy world without breaking a sweat and how it is visualised. None of that was surprising, I was more surprised on her jump from Lady Bird to Little Women on those aspects, here it was just delightful to see how much of a unique vision Greta has. My only real complaint is that there's a considerable part towards the climax where Ken goes from sidekick to villain to kinda hijacking the movie as a lead for a bit before it goes back to Barbie that just felt off. It had the Ken song in the middle of it which was absolutely a highlight, but at the same time I think the movie both lost focus and pace for the first time just before the finale. Maybe he should have been treated as co-lead from the start or they should have commit to the villain turn idk. But the way they went about it felt miscalculated and would have left a sour taste in my mouth if the real finale with Margot becoming a real girl with a vagina (that ending line got the biggest laugh in my screening) didn't land so well. I'm not blaming Margot or Gosling for any of it, they were both great and commiting so hard to the bit was the right choice for both. Especially for Goose who's been one of my favorites since forever, I was getting a bit worried as more and more marketing material got released that this might be a one-note joke character that gets old by the end, but he really killed it. All in all I would still rank this below Little Women, maybe even Lady Bird but haven't seen that one since the year it came out. On the other hand it also deserves the hype of the unique auter-driven blockbuster it was slapped with when the cast and crew was anounced. On the other other hand I lowkey hope Netflix burns to the ground before she has to make those godforsaken Narnia movies. Literally do anything else girl. The world is your oyster now.

I don't know I feel at this point lumping these people as "dummies" with random Marvel stans that were angry Black Panther lost the oscar to an old guy or that dude with zero followers ranting about Joker losing BP to a korean movie he's never heard off is cutting them way too much slack. This whole corner of the internet is entirely calculated. I wouldn't be shocked if they 're reading all the leaks beforehand for those woke target movies and have their thumbnails ready weeks in advance of release. If the entertainment product is contentious or isn't a runaway hit (usually for many reasons other than being woke) the got themselves weeks (Mermaid) or in some cases years (TLJ) of content. If said product is such a huge hit there's no angle to downplay it and even their incel racist following aint biting that much, they drop their crusade quickly and quietly because otherwise they 'd have to admit most people don't care enough to be outraged by "woke propaganda". They tried this with Avatwo and Mario and their crusade lasted like a week. Same thing will happen with Barbie, because by the looks of it, next week there's not gonna be any angle that paint it as anything other than a mega success.