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Warner Bros. says they won’t try to manufacture “the next Barbenheimer,” because it must come from the audience, not a studio
Warner Bros. won’t try to recreate the Barbenheimer phenomenon, because it would feel inauthentic if it wasn’t fan driven
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The summer of 2023 was an unforgettable time for the movie industry.
Warner Bros. was releasing Barbie, and Universal Pictures was releasing Oppenheimer. Once filmgoers realized both films were coming out on the same day, July 21, people began debating which movie they would see first. It wasn’t a rivalry, but rather a fun double feature. The cultural moment, dubbed Barbenheimer, got so big that even Tom Cruise was asked which movie he was seeing first.
A rising tide raises all ships, and the Barbenheimer phenomenon helped both films become box office winners. Barbie grossed $1.4 billion, and Oppenheimer grossed $975 million. This was a big boon for theaters and studios that had been struggling to stabilize since the COVID-19 pandemic.
Since then, some have wondered what the next Barbenheimer will be. Warner Bros. co-chairs Mike De Luca and Pam Abdy were recently asked if they would try to coordinate their tentpoles with rival studios in an effort to create another Barbenheimer. However, WB doesn’t think it’s that simple.
“We haven't thought about it,” Warner Bros. co-chair Mike De Luca says during a Substack discussion with Franklin Leonard. “I have no data to support this, but on a gut level, I feel like it's almost user generated content. I feel like the manufacturer of a phenomenon like that comes from the fans, and it's organic. If we tried to pre-plan that, I feel like it would be sniffed at.”
“Audiences are so sophisticated, and people are so sophisticated, consuming more media than ever, and God bless them. We feel like we cater to an extremely smart audience and very sophisticated audience. I feel like they would sniff out any prefabricated attempt to recreate a phenomenon like that. I think those phenomenons are fans first, and they're the ones that create the wave and the experience of it and feel the ownership of it, which is what makes it so exciting. But I think if you plan for it or prefabricated it, you do that at your own risk.”
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