Summer is in full swing, and you all know what that means: it’s blockbuster movie season!
So far, the releases this season have been something of a mixed bag, delivering critical gems like Spider-Man: Across the Universe, The Blackening and You Hurt My Feelings, but also duds such as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny and The Flash. If that wasn’t bad enough for the latter two, they’re mega budget tentpoles (with The Dial of Destiny being one of the most expensive movies ever made) that are currently floundering at the box office, unlikely to turn a profit when their massive marketing budgets are also considered.
While this might not be ideal for post-COVID commercial cinema, there is still hope on the horizon for filmgoers as the biggest box office battle of the year is set to take place this month, and the film now favoured to come out on top might just surprise you.
July 12th will see the release of the first of these hugely anticipated productions, the Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One, which is a sequel to Mission: Impossible – Fallout, a film I regard as one of the greatest action movies ever made. This will be followed by Christopher Nolan’s star-studded Oppenheimer on July 22nd, which focuses on the titular J. Robert Oppenheimer, who is otherwise known as the “father of the atomic bomb”. That same date, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie will also be released, a film many expect to exceed even the highest expectations we could have had just a few years back, from the pitch-perfect casting of Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling to its subversion of Barbie’s most problematic elements.
There has already been much made of the same-day release of Oppenheimer and Barbie, which are very different movies but come with equal amounts of anticipation, leaving many to speculate as to which would come out on top. Then there is the whole IMAX debacle, as there are only so many theatres that support this filming technology, used in both Oppenheimer and Mission: Impossible, but the company behind favour the former over the latter due to Nolan’s longstanding support for them, going all the way back to 2008’s The Dark Knight. Media reports suggest that Cruise had decried the fact that his movie must compete for what’s left in IMAX theatres. With that being said, Mission: Impossible will have a ten-day head start upon which it will surely capitalise – including getting shown in IMAX theatres before Oppenheimer’s release – and Cruise has been more than a good sport by encouraging audiences to also see his competitors.
Yet, in spite of this advantage, or indeed Nolan’s own box office pedigree, it is actually Gerwig’s Barbie that could very well have the edge over the other two. At least, that’s according to early projections, which expect Barbie to earn $70-$80 million in its opening weekend (Warner Bros. cautiously expects $60 million), as opposed to Oppenheimer’s projected $40 million. It is also worth mentioning that Oppenheimer is R-rated, which inherently means a film will make less money than it would with a lower age rating like Barbie, but this is by no means a number to scoff at. Meanwhile, Mission: Impossible will undoubtedly have an excellent run in its first weekend. It would be utterly surprising if it didn’t take the number one spot at the box office. However, once Barbie and Oppenheimer are released it is off to the races, and there is absolutely a scenario where it could fall to third place in its second weekend.