Barbie joined the Billion Dollar Club during Greta Gerwig’s birthday weekend, but Oppenheimer — the “-enheimer” in Barbenheimer — is no slouch at the box office, either. The Christopher Nolan film is up to $578 million, making it one of the 10 highest-grossing R-rated movies ever.
On Wednesday, Oppenheimer passed Fifty Shades of Grey to enter the top 10 at the worldwide box office. The list is topped by Joker ($1.074 billion), followed by Deadpool 2 ($785.8 million), Deadpool ($782.8), The Matrix Reloaded ($741.8 million), It ($701.8 million), Detective Chinatown 3 ($686.2 million), Logan ($619.1 million), The Passion of the Christ ($612 million), and The Hangover Part II ($586.7 million). Oppenheimer is also #10 on the domestic list ($238 million), just ahead of Beverly Hills Cop. Number one? The Passion of the Christ, starring inexplicable box office draw Jim Caviezel.
“The film I wanted to make couldn’t have been done smaller,” Nolan told the Independent about Oppenheimer. “It’s not about money, it’s not about budget – the magnitude of the story is what attracted me to it.” He added, “The fact that Oppenheimer and his fellow scientists couldn’t completely eliminate the possibility that they might set fire to the atmosphere and destroy the entire world, but still triggered the test – the idea of someone taking that risk on behalf of all of us and all our descendants. There’s nothing bigger than that.”
Oppenheimer won’t become Nolan’s highest-grossing movie — that would be The Dark Knight Rises with over $1 billion — but the fact that a three-hour drama for adults is nearing $600 million is maybe more impressive.
(Via Collider)