Oppenheimer Outsells Barbie in Tickets Sales in India, Selling 1.4 Million Tickets During Opening Weekend

Oppenheimer has outsold Barbie in terms of ticket sales in India, as per statistics from BookMyShow. As of Sunday morning, July 23, BookMyShow offered a strong 74 percent contribution to the overall box office revenue from India the Christopher Nolan-directed biopic, selling 1.4 million tickets. Meanwhile, Greta Gerwig's candy-coated Barbie wasn't trailing that far behind either, with BookMyShow contributing an equally mammoth 70 percent to the overall box office collections in India, selling over 500,000 tickets in the country. Late last week, analysts predicted the same as well, partly because advance ticket bookings for Oppenheimer on IMAX opened ‘much earlier than usual,' which helped it take the lead.

“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 in a press release. Last week, the online ticketing company claimed that Oppenheimer had crossed over 300,000 ticket sales in advance booking, while Barbie was at around 54,000 in ticket sales.

It's also worth mentioning that Oppenheimer was the only IMAX release this past weekend, boosting ticket sales in Bengaluru, Hyderabad, Mumbai, Delhi-NCR, and Chennai, across the BookMyShow app. Despite the contrasting themes between it and Barbie — with the latter only releasing in English in India (no additional dubs) — moviegoers have shown strong interest in both films, with a good chunk of them opting for a double feature. When considering the next tier of cities, we've got Pune, Kochi, and Ahmedabad in the lead. The press release also stressed that the promotional material and marketing for both films had encouraged audiences to opt for the most-immersive IMAX formats, in the most non-typical timings such as 12am and 3am shows — something previously seen with Avatar: The Way of Water and the major Marvel Cinematic Universe movies.

There haven't been any fully verified box office numbers for Barbie vs Oppenheimer in India yet, though numerous reports suggest that the latter is heavily leading. This is in sheer contrast to the international rankings, where Barbie opened to an impressive $337 million (about Rs. 2,763 crore) at the global box office, setting a record within the US and Canada for the biggest debut weekend of the year with a $155 million (about Rs. 1,271 crore) collection. In regions outside North America, the Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling-led film made $182 million (about Rs. 1,492 crore) in ticket sales. Analysts in India had predicted that the film would make around Rs. 15 crore based on the aforementioned advance booking numbers, trailing way behind Oppenheimer.

Marking Cillian Murphy's first lead role in a Nolan film, Oppenheimer made a worldwide debut of $174.1 million (about Rs. 1,427 crore), which was expected due to its R-rating for ‘prolonged nudity' and language, combined with its considerably lesser marketing, in part to the Hollywood actors' strike which commenced during the peak of the premiere events. As per Deadline, these figures reflect the highest-grossing opening weekend for an R-rated film year to date in the US, besting John Wick: Chapter 4. The film made $80.5 million (about Rs. 660 crore) in North America and another $93.6 million (about Rs. 767 crore) overseas.

Both Barbie and Oppenheimer are now showing in theatres worldwide.