Who wouldn’t want to chase the bleak, existential crisis of Barbie with a little nuclear holocaust? The world is ready for it.
After a decade of doomscrolling that flattened the world’s horrors into mundanity, placing the rise of fascism, global pandemic, and near-constant climate catastrophe on the same newsfeed as TikTokers lapping up fake ice cream for react emojis, audiences are ready for a double feature of Greta Gerwig’s cheerfully-pink Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s unsettlingly-white Oppenheimer. Surprisingly, that excitement is translating into actual ticket sales.
Unlike the misbegotten meme magic of Morbius, which delivered the vampiric supervillain, but not audiences, into multiplexes twice within a few months, the Barbenheimer meme is sending people to AMC theaters, where, somehow, heartbreak and radiation poisoning feel good. Per The Hollywood Reporter, AMC says that tens of thousands of moviegoers have already secured tickets for the unofficial double feature. “That more than 20,000 moviegoers have already made plans and purchased tickets to see Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day is a great sign that the growing online conversation around seeing both of these incredible films is turning into ticket sales,” Elizabeth Frank, executive vp worldwide programming & chief content officer of AMC Theatres, said in a statement.
The groundswell of Barbenheimer memes and potential ticket buyers proudly and heroically proclaiming that they would be watching both films in a single 24-hour period has become a softball talking point on both films’ press tours. Even the cast of a movie about the creation of an explosive that killed more than 150,000 civilians, leveled Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and spawned the Cold War has Barbie fever. “I can’t wait to see Barbie,” says Cillian Murphy, who plays the man potentially responsible for the end of all life on Earth. “I love Margot Robbie, I love Ryan Gosling. My advice would be for people to go see both on the same day.”
The double feature has already gone nuclear online. Last month, Tom Cruise shared a photo of himself and Mission: Impossible—Dead Reckoning Part One director Christopher McQuarrie holding tickets to Indiana Jones And The Dial Of Destiny, Barbie, and Oppenheimer. “I love a double feature, and it doesn’t get more explosive (or more pink) than one with Oppenheimer and Barbie,” read the caption to Cruise’s tweet. But apparently, the Barbenheimer challenge is one stunt Cruise won’t do himself. He later clarified that he’d see Oppenheimer Friday and Barbie Saturday.
However, Cruise’s post inspired Gerwig and the titular Barbie Margot Robbie to accept his mission, posting ticket shots of their own. Still, despite Gerwig and Robbie rizzying up baby Opp, Nolan seems unlikely to play along. The director of a movie about a guy who has now become death, the destroyer of worlds, has more important things to do, like figuring out how to get all 11 miles of Oppenheimer onto projectors.