The Haunted Mansion is no match for Barbenheimer at the box office

It’s like the old saw contends: Theme park rides simply can’t stand up in the face of plastic dolls or nuclear weapons. That’s per Variety, which reports that Disney’s The Haunted Mansion is almost certianly about to get demolished in its opening weekend in theaters, bulldozed by the combined weight of Barbie and Oppenheimer, which will knock the movie to a third-place debut.

Haunted Mansion—Disney’s second effort to do for Hatbox Ghosts and Madame Leota what Pirates Of The Caribbean did for drunken island murderers—has already run into some trouble, even before it came out. The film was the first major movie to attempt to do a premiere after the SAG-AFTRA strike began; rather than bringing out a striking LaKeith Stanfield, Tiffany Haddish, Owen Wilson, or Danny DeVito to stump for the film, Disney instead opted to trot costumed Disneyland cast members down the red carpet. It was… less than impressive.

Of course, bad red carpets don’t sink movies. But it’s nevertheless felt like Haunted Mansion has done a shockingly poor job of making its case for itself elsewhere, too; in an ecosystem where Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan’s films have sparked genuine interest and excitement from movie-goers, Disney has seemed content to let Justin Simien’s movie just aimlessly float into theaters.

Numbers-wise, Haunted Mansion is expected to bring in between $25 and $30 million this weekend—which isn’t terrible for a kids movie, provided you haven’t spend more than $150 million to make it, which Disney has. Barbie, meanwhile, is expected to make at least $65 million this weekend (and possibly quite a bit more), while Oppenheimer is looking at $35 million; both movies are now in their second weeks in theaters, where they’re continuing to fend off all comers, it appears.