Barbenheimer makes for a $300 million weekend at the U.S. box office

One of the clearest lessons from the Barbenheimer weekend is that when movie studios trust the theatrical experience, when they trust artists to do what they do best, and when they trust audiences to seek out good entertainment rather than mindlessly accepting what is fed to them, then everybody wins. Because, at least for this weekend, everybody won. Or, in a more accurate sense, Greta Gerwig’s Barbie won.

The toy movie made $155 million in its debut, a good $70 million or so ahead of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer in second place with $80 million. Barbie already had the best one-day opening of the year, but this gives it the highest opening weekend of any film directed by a woman ever. (Captain Marvel from Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck made $153 million and Wonder Woman from Patty Jenkins made $103 million.) Not that Oppenheimer is a stinker: With its help, this past weekend was fourth biggest in U.S. box office history, with the other three only managing to go higher because they had Avengers or Star Wars movies. In other words, Barbenheimer was a huge success.

Rounding out the top five are Sound Of Freedom (with an asterisk), Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One (dropping pretty far in only its second weekend), and Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny (hanging on okay in its fourth weekend even though its absurd price tag will guarantee that it never makes good money). The bottom five includes Insidious: The Red Door, Elemental, Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse (still in the top 10 after eight weeks), Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts, and No Hard Feelings. All of those movies, in their own way, contributed to the success of Barbenheimer, so we would like to officially rechristen this as the Barbenheimer Of Freedossible And The Redental-Verseastslings Weekend instead.

Here’s the full top 10 from Box Office Mojo.

• Barbie
• Oppenheimer
• Sound Of Freedom
• Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One
• Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny
• Insidious: The Red Door
• Elemental
• Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse
• Transformers: Rise Of The Beasts
• No Hard Feelings