Oppenheimer Breaks Rs. 150-Crore Mark at the Indian Box Office

In its fourth week, Oppenheimer continues to dominate the Indian box office, crossing the Rs. 150 crore mark. The country remains the biggest market where the Christopher Nolan film has outgrossed its competition Barbie, which recently joined the billion-dollar club in worldwide returns. There are no official numbers available for Barbie's financial returns in India, but the last recorded value is Rs. 32.75 crore, from earlier this month. Globally, Oppenheimer has collected an impressive $666.4 million (about Rs. 5,539 crore) from a reported budget of $100 million (about Rs. 821 crore), which has understandably been deemed profitable for Universal Pictures.

With these figures, Oppenheimer is currently the sixth highest-grossing film of the year, sitting right behind Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, which recently released on digital. Barbie, on the other hand, sits comfortably at the second position, having bested Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and slowly headed on a path to overthrow The Super Mario Bros. Movie. Oppenheimer debuted exceptionally well in India, selling 1.7 million tickets through BookMyShow, during the opening weekend, with most audiences opting to watch in IMAX — just the way Nolan intended for the biopic to be viewed. Despite being R-rated, the film turned over a profit in India, while Barbie trailed further behind, partly due to not receiving a Hindi-language dub.

Oppenheimer has now become Nolan's fifth-highest-grossing film, beating his other World War II movie Dunkirk, which made $525 million (about Rs. 4,362 crore) globally. The ‘Barbenheimer' craze significantly contributed to its success, in turn helping PVR Inox turn in a profit in an otherwise struggling region, where Hindi-language movies continued to disappoint — both critically and commercially. The Tom Cruise-led Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One was another major IMAX hit in July, showing a demand for Hollywood movies in the country. In fact, PVR Inox just launched India's first standalone IMAX experience at Delhi's Priya Cinema — a 316-seater theatre with a single IMAX screen that is dedicated to the said large-scale format.

On track to finish as Nolan's biggest non-Batman movie, Oppenheimer marks his first film with Universal Pictures since severing ties with longtime partner Warner Bros. However, it was recently reported that WB was looking to make amends with the filmmaker, with the latter even receiving a seven-figure royalty cheque for his work on the time-bending espionage film Tenet, which was released in theatres amidst the pandemic. Nolan allegedly did some post-production work on Oppenheimer at the WB lot as well, raising suspicions of a mended relationship between the two parties.

Oppenheimer is now showing in theatres worldwide.