The Brilliant Tactic Behind the Same Week Release of Barbie and Oppenheimer

If we think of the cinema audience as a giant cake, we can say that these two films are currently dividing the cake. According to the first box office results, Barbie’s share is higher.

But what if one of the two films had been released on a different week, wouldn’t it have lost some of this cake to the other film?

BARBENHEIMER: Instead of eating two separate small cakes, split one giant cake!

Greta Gerwig, who made a name for herself as a screenwriter and actress with the film Francis Ha in 2012, later achieved significant success in her career by writing and directing the films Lady Bird and Little Women. She now follows the success of her biggest project by adapting Barbie for the big screen.

No need to even describe Nolan. Each new film is a name that is expected years ago. Now he has brought the biography of J. Robert Oppenheimer, the physicist who developed the first nuclear weapons, to the big screen.

So, why did the clash of these two films make so much noise? In fact, it has become a hot topic for many people.

Of course, the fact that both films were released on the same day created a rivalry. In general, film production companies do not want to take a risk by putting a movie on the same day if they have a serious competitor in the vision. However, in this example, no risk is taken, but rather a clever marketing tactic.

Before we move on to tactics, there is something we must remember.

Christopher Nolan’s Warner Bros. He had a 19-year relationship with but the genius director decided to switch to Universal in 2021. The reason why Nolan ended this relationship is Warner Bros. and HBO agreed to make the digital premieres of the films by making a deal.

Hearing this, Nolan was very upset, it was disrespectful to make such a deal without his consent. You go shoot a movie with an IMAX camera, you want to take the audience in the palm of your hand with the big screen, but Warner Bros. Letting millions of people watch your movie on the phone without asking you and cause your movie to be taken into the hands of the audience, it’s not going to work!

Nolan is no god, of course, there were some clauses in his contract with Universal and he had to abide by them. For example, it was decided that Universal’s Asteroid City (Wes Anderson) would be released before Oppenheimer and no other film would be released for three weeks in order to protect the box office.

Even if Oppenheimer had been released on the same date as Asteroid City, there wouldn’t have been enough theaters left. In fact, before Barbie and Oppenheimer, another monster like Mission Impossible was released.

For these reasons, Oppenheimer’s vision date is stuck to this week. Also, according to rumors, Nolan didn’t like the fact that Oppenheimer was released on the same day as Barbie.

The Barbie vs Oppenheimer feud has come to life on the internet, and in particular Warner Bros. with Barbie. side turned this into an opportunity.

The main reason why the contention has grown so much is that a dark film and a pink film created conflict. Just as chemicals that are contrary to chemistry cause an explosion when they come together, this contradiction in cinema has created a pink atomic bomb effect.

Moreover, this example is not the first. A similar situation has happened before. In 2008, another Barbie-like movie, Mamma Mia, was put in front of Nolan’s The Dark Knight. Shot on a budget of just $52 million, Mamma Mia managed to gross $609,841,637 thanks to this reverse effect.

Moreover, the two studios were facing each other. But this time, Warner Bros. was on the dark side and Universal was on the pink side. After 15 years, this time Warner Bros. used the same tactic against its rival Universal. What happened again happened to Nolan, who switched between these two companies. 🙂 Who knows, maybe someone inside Warner Bros. deliberately used this tactic after the unpleasant experience with Nolan.

Going on this effect of the pink and dark conflict, the marketing teams increased their box office success by making the cake much larger instead of eating the cake to be shared separately.

They both used the influence of social media and wanted to show that the cinema, which has resisted against streaming platforms in recent years, is not dead yet, and the power of huge films in cinema.

In fact, Tom Cruise stated that he would watch both films since Mission Impossible was in the vision, and showed that the cinema supports him by pretending to support those films. He showed the same support for another Nolan movie Tenet at the time of Covid. Here, too, his main purpose was to keep the cinema alive.

As social media continues with memes about “Barbenheimer”, which movie will win? It is better not to leave the chests until the last moment!

In conclusion; If these two films had not come face to face, perhaps both would not have been watched so much. It is a very pleasant situation for the cinema when people buy tickets to both movies and watch them on the same day. Now consider streaming platforms. 🙂

If you want to see the real Barbenheimer, let’s take you like this: