There is no denying that summer 2023 has been a mixed bag of box office hits and misses, but the simultaneous release of Greta Gerwig's Barbie and Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer (labelled Barbenheimer) has broken a multitude of box office records. Following their atomic opening weekends, both movies continue dominating the global box office, leaving the new release, Disney's The Haunted Mansion struggling to launch.

After a massive opening weekend, Barbie generated an estimated $93 million for its second frame for a current domestic total of $351 million after just over a week. Internationally, Barbie's box office is even more impressive, with an estimated $423 million giving the Margot Robbie-led movie sitting at almost $775 million; it's no longer a question of if Barbie is going to make a billion dollars at the box office, it's when. 

Meanwhile, Christopher Nolan's epic three-hour biopic Oppenheimer shows incredible staying power with a second weekend of $46 million for a current domestic total of $174 million. Much like Barbie, Oppenheimer's international box office is just as explosive, with more than $226 million for a global total of $400 million. After a tepid start to the summer, Barbenheimer has been the jolt the box office desperately needed, and it should set a new gold standard for counter-programming. On a side note, the campaign for Margot Robbie and Cillian Murphy to host next year's Oscars starts here.

While Barbenheimer is riding high, it's not good news for Disney's reboot of The Haunted Mansion, which has only managed to generate $24 million over the weekend. Ironically, the remake has an almost identical opening weekend as the Eddie Murphy version released in 2003. There's a chance that the new Haunted Mansion might become a slow-burn modest hit like Pixar's Elemental, but we'll have to wait and see what next weekend brings. Finally, the latest Mission Impossible might have lost a lot of IMAX screens to Oppenheimer, but it's currently edging towards a worldwide box office of $500 million. There's still a long way to go to match the $791 million the previous entry, Fallout, grossed in 2018; either way, Tom Cruise will return next year for the concluding part of the Dead Reckoning story.