Box office: A giant prehistoric shark comes between Barbie and Oppenheimer

The top four films, including a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles reboot, all grossed over $28 million — the first time that's happened since 2018.

Jason Statham gives the boot to a Megalodon in Meg 2: The Trench.

A giant prehistoric shark came between Barb ’n ’heimer this week, as the box office had a rare weekend when four films grossed over $28 million simultaneously.

Barbie, which grossed an estimated $53 million between Friday and Sunday, easily topped the box-office chart for a third straight week, setting some new records along the way, but the #2 spot was taken this week by Meg 2: The Trench, a sequel to 2018’s Jason-Statham-fights-Megalodons action hit The Meg. It opened to $30 million.

Oppenheimer, the three-hour biopic about the inventor of the atom bomb—and the film that was runner-up to Barbie for its first two weeks—held strong in its third week but is currently in a tight race for the #3 spot with the latest attempt to reboot the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles franchise. Both films are estimated to have earned about $28 million, with Oppenheimer currently having the edge at $28.7 million.

Any of these films could fall slightly below their projections, but even if they do, this weekend will mark the first time that four films have grossed over $24 million since November 23-25, 2018, when the top four films—Ralph Breaks the Internet, Creed II, The Grinch, and Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald—all grossed over $29 million.

This achievement is all the more remarkable for having happened in August—which is generally considered one of the slower movie months—and not during a major holiday like the American Thanksgiving, or in one of the busier summer months.¹

More stats and facts on each of this week’s top ten can be found below.

First, a general point about “Barbenheimer” and the performance of those two films relative to the other blockbusters that have come out post-Covid.

• Two weeks ago, Barbie had the fourth-best first weekend of the decade (behind the Spider-Man, Doctor Strange, and Black Panther sequels), and last week, it had the very-best second weekend. Now it has the fourth-best third weekend.

  • So Barbie continues to float near the top of the weekend-by-weekend charts, but it was only at the top of the charts for one weekend.

  • Spider-Man: No Way Home is the only film that has been ahead of it twice.

• Oppenheimer, on the other hand, had the 17th-best first weekend of the decade and the 13th-best second weekend, and it now has the 10th-best third weekend of the decade.

  • So Oppenheimer is rising on the weekend-by-weekend charts—not because its grosses have gone up week-to-week, but because its grosses are going down more slowly than the grosses for most of the decade’s other blockbusters.

  • In a word, Oppenheimer has better “legs” than most recent blockbusters.

And now, a few more stats re: this week’s top ten, title by title: