We’re going to deviate a little bit from our usual format this week wherein we follow our editorial with several timely industry news items. Not because there aren’t plenty of relevant updates for our usual digest posts, but rather because most of the inquiries and correspondence we’ve received here at Celluloid Junkie over the past two weeks have had to do with one of two subjects; the simultaneous global release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” on 21 July or the ongoing SAG-AFTRA and Writers Guild of America (WGA) labor strike against the Alliance of Motion Picture and Television Producers (AMPTP). For those that aren’t interested in reading any more about “Barbenheimer,” and nobody would fault you if that were the case, all of the strike related analysis is in the second section of this week’s newsletter.

Barbenheimer Explodes On Screen and Off
At this point you don’t need me to spew out all the record setting box office figures generated by the release of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.” Even those who specialize in tracking such information had trouble keeping up, adjusting their weekend estimated grosses upwards, by as much as USD $7 million for “Barbie” in North America. And things haven’t slowed down since the weekend with “Barbie” taking in over USD $26 million on Monday and Tuesday as “Oppenheimer” held the line at USD $12 million. And that’s just domestic figures.

While “Barbie” may be generating twice the box office and dominating the headlines, Christopher Nolan’s biopic of physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer was ringing up the filmmaker’s best opening outside of his “Batman” movies. Some less cited figures for “Oppenheimer” are its premium large format numbers. In the United States the movie played on 80% of PLF screens accounting for 47% of its box office, including 26% from IMAX, twice the format’s usual average. No wonder Tom Cruise was so anxious over losing all those PLF screens for the second weekend of “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One.”

Remarkably instead of cannibalizing each other as some had feared, the competing release of the two films wound up assisting each one more so than if they had been released on separate weekends. In an example of a rising tide lifts all boats, 6% of those who saw “Oppenheimer” bought tickets because screenings of “Barbie” were sold out. In the US, 26% of moviegoers saw both films during their opening weekend.

Personally, I find the excitement the dual release generated both inside and outside the industry fascinating. Indeed, I was hoping to get away with not writing about either “Barbie” or “Oppenheimer” this week though the internet #Barbenheimer meme that has sent audiences racing to movie theatres appears to be inescapable. Sitting next to me at a Los Angeles restaurant last Friday evening was a family of eight – grandparents, parents, three children, one boyfriend – ranging in age from 11-years-old to seventy-one. Every single person was wearing pink, even the boyfriend in the Metallica t-shirt. Everyone walking into the restaurant commented on the table, mentioning the title of filmmaker Greta Gerwig’s cinematic spin on Mattel’s popular toy by name. When their waiter showed up he jokingly asked, “Hey, how was Oppenheimer?”

That kind of unassisted awareness of a film, let alone two, is the kind of stuff studio marketing executives dream about. The “Barbie” phenomenon appears to have reached into all aspects of our society at this point. Earlier today I received an email from a stationer I frequent, Goulet Pens, with the subject line, #Barbenheimer: Get the Best of Both Worlds, offering a selection of pink fountain pens for “Team Barbie” and black fountain pens for “Team Opphenheimer.”

Tell me the last time you saw a streaming movie (not series) create this kind of public reaction. For that matter, tell me the first time.

The moviegoer frenzy over Barbenheimer thankfully spilled over into the film business with every distribution executive and exhibitor I have been speaking with openly commenting on how they are once again excited about their chosen professions. Naturally leave it to industry pundits who, bored of reporting on stupendous daily grosses, quickly decided to throw cold-water on everyone with lengthy think pieces about how the releases were a “fluke” and that such a phenomenon couldn’t be replicated.

Perhaps not, though that’s not the point. During our mutual analyst calls and his numerous media hits leading up to last weekend, Daniel Loría, Senior Vice President of Content Strategy & Editorial Director at Boxoffice Media, summarized it best, “My biggest takeaway of this Barbenheimer phenomenon is that it was just as much about going to the movies as it was about the movies themselves.”

This might be why, according to Movio, 42.74% the audience for “Barbie” was comprised of an impressive 42.74% infrequent and 20.20% frequent moviegoers, while those figures for “Oppenheimer” amounted to 36.39% infrequent and 20.06% frequent.

Sarah Lewthwaite, Movio’s CEO explained, “The fact that both films were able bring back such a high number of infrequent moviegoers, and have connected with audiences of all demographics, reinforces that when great content is combined with effective marketing, audiences will turn up in droves”.

Unfortunately, just as some of these moviegoers are re-discovering the big screen experience, there may be fewer opportunities to coax them back into theatres in the months ahead thanks to the ongoing dual writers and actors strikes.

How the SAG-AFTRA and WGA Strikes Affect Movie Theatres
“Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” may be the last two studio blockbusters cinema operators see for a while. Certainly any movies released amidst the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strikes will have a harder time generating any kind of awareness due to a lack of publicity and promotion. Though a majority of the issues and deal points the guilds are trying to work out with the AMPTP revolve around television productions, they most certainly will affect theatrical distribution and exhibition.

If our emails and conversations with cinema operators since the actors went on strike are any indication, there is a lot of confusion about what it means for exhibitors both in the short in long term. So let’s try and clear some things up.

The first thing that happened when SAG-AFTRA joined writers on the picket lines 12 July is that all of the studio’s film productions were halted. Some indie productions were also suspended but many of those have started up again under interim agreements with SAG-AFTRA. Movies like “Deadpool 3,” “Gladiator 2,” and “Wicked: Part One” are all in limbo.

The second action that immediately impacted film releases is the unions’ ban on promoting or publicizing any title associated with members of the AMPTP (meaning all the studios, Netflix, Apple, Amazon, etc.) That’s why we saw all of the premieres for “Mission: Impossible,” “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” happening weeks in advance of their opening. If you want to know how hard it is to promote a movie when its stars aren’t on a PR circuit or chatting it up on late night talk shows, just ask the folks at Warner Bros. about their experience on “The Flash” just a few months ago.

This wrinkle is already causing fall film festivals to rethink their programming as distributors pull titles with big name talent who won’t be able to walk the red carpet. Just this week the producers of Luca Guadagnino’s next movie “Challengers” starring Zendaya pulled it out of the Venice Film Festival where it was booked as the opening night entry. After all, the reason to pay an actress like Zendaya USD $10 million to do an indie film is for the promotional opportunity it creates when she shows up at a splashy gala.

Many of these films are the kinds of “specialty” titles that have been struggling in cinemas over the past year and which need all the publicity they can get to support an eventual theatrical release.

By the way, the strike hasn’t prevented Venice from programming star-studded productions such as Yorgos Lanthimos’s “Poor Things,” David Fincher’s “The Killer,” Michael Mann’s “Ferrari,” and Bradley Cooper’s “Maestro.” In this last instance Cooper, who plays Leonard Bernstein in the biopic, may be able to show up at the festival as a director.

In fact, it appears the movie star-as-director route is how the Toronto International Film Festival is solving its star wattage problem, booking such titles as Anna Kendrick’s directorial debut “The Dating Game,” Chris Pine’s directorial debut “Poolman,” as well as Michael Keaton’s “Knox Goes Away,” Ethan Hake’s “Wildcat” and Kristin Scott Thomas’ “North Star.” It is worth pointing out that any film that isn’t affiliated with an AMPTP member can still have a full entourage of actors participate at a festival, which may be why we don’t hear about big acquisitions occurring until after the festival season.

That brings me to the two biggest misconceptions I’ve heard from exhibitors over the past three weeks; (1) the strike will be resolved quickly and (2) a long strike will only affect next summer’s release schedule. Neither are accurate.

I won’t go into all the reasons for the SAG-AFTRA and WGA strike or their demands, or the own goal Disney CEO Bob Iger committed discussing the matter during a CNBC interview from Sun Valley, Idaho. Just know the unions believe this an existential moment for their members as much as the AMPTP members believe it is for them. Right now the two sides aren’t even talking or negotiating on deal points for a new contract. SAG-AFTRA has scheduled their A-list movie stars for picket line duty over at least two months so as not to waist all their photo ops during the first three weeks of the strike.

Meanwhile, the longer the strikes go the more they will delay the releases of next summer’s highly anticipated movies. This is why studios have been examining their fall and holiday release slates while debating which films to delay until after the strikes or to fill in next summer. Disney delayed numerous titles pre-emptively back in June and is said to be reviewing their options for the remainder of the year. If exhibitors thought the fall release calendar looked thin before the strikes began, just wait. “Challengers” isn’t only skipping Venice, it’s skipping 2023, pushing back its September opening to April of 2024.

Every release from “Dune: Part 2” to “Wonka” to “Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom” to Disney’s animated “Wish” could find themselves with new dates. And it isn’t just next summer’s release schedule that distributors are thinking about. Even though they tried to front load some of the post-production work in anticipation of a strike, some of the fall and holiday films are still being completed. “Aquaman” was reportedly going through reshoots on the lead up to the strike.

Whenever I tell anyone that I don’t think the strikes will be resolved until early October they are shocked it would take so long (though less so as time goes by). That’s because unlike past labor disputes there is nothing urgently instigating the sides to negotiate a settlement on a new contract. The fall television season isn’t as important as it once was and the networks believe they can squeak through with international series and unscripted reality shows. Netflix, one of the AMPTP’s most recent members, has never cared about a fall TV season and surely could care less about the summer movie release calendar. The Emmy Awards are already working out a contingency plan for their (current though likely moving) September ceremony. The Oscars aren’t until March. You get the picture.

My current thinking on how the strikes end has more to do with quarterly earnings reports. The media companies (i.e. studios) will be holding their second quarter earnings calls over the next two weeks. They will inevitably be asked about the ongoing strikes and how they will alter future earnings. It won’t be until third quarter earnings calls that the damage to balance sheets caused by the strikes will stand out. That’s sometime in late October, early November. At that point, most senior executives will not want to face another earnings season having to discuss what the strikes are doing to their business.

Thus, sometime in early September, when everyone gets back from their summer holidays, the AMPTP will sit down with one of the sides, probably SAG-AFTRA and begin their discussions in earnest. Given how far apart the sides are this could take awhile. At some point in that October time frame one or more of the studios is going to need to get back to work sooner than the others and will start pushing for a settlement.

But trying to predict the timing on these kinds of labor disputes is as difficult as it is to purposefully generate a viral marketing phenomenon like Barbenheimer. Some might consider it impossible. And they’d be right on both counts.

Celluloid Junkie is the leading online resource dedicated to the global film and cinema business. The Marquee is our newsletter focused on motion picture exhibition; keeping industry professionals informed of important news, the latest trends and insightful analysis