Gran Turismo and Barbie race to the top of the US box office

Blue Beetle drops to third, and Oppenheimer follows, becoming Christopher Nolan’s biggest hit outside the Dark Knight saga. (Source: French Film)

Barbie no longer reigns over the US box office since the release of Blue Beetle last weekend, but remains glued to the novelties that just manage to overtake it. Gran Turismo starts at the top of the rankings thanks to 17.3 million dollars in receipts collected in 3,856 theaters, but the action film with Orlando Bloom is only 200,000 greenbacks ahead of Greta Gerwig’s comedy!

In the sixth weekend, the film carried by Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling thus earned an additional 17.1 million dollars in 3,736 cinemas, a drop of only 16% compared to the last classification. Which is approaching its American total of 600 million. It leads the biggest domestic hits of 2023, ahead of Super Mario Bros.., and is about to be released on VOD, DVD and blu-ray there (September 5) before being offered in IMAX the week of 09/22. In the world, Barbie reached 1.34 billion in revenue, and is also preparing to overtake the animated film.

Directed by Neill Blomkamp (District 9), Gran Turismo cost Sony $60 million, not including its pretty big promotion. The studio worked on this adaptation of a successful video game franchise for years, then decided to postpone it at the last moment for two weeks during the summer when it saw competition from “Barbenheimer”. Locally, only, since in France, the film was released as planned on August 9… and failed to dislodge Barbie of the throne. Its success is not yet assured despite this start at the top of the American ranking.

Blue Beetle fell from first to third place, losing 49% of its revenue in the second weekend. Thanks to 12.8 million more dollars, this adaptation of comics accumulates less than 50 million in ten days in the country. Warner will have a hard time paying back its estimated $100 million budget, but since the studio also produced Barbiehe remains the winner of this weekend.

Oppenheimer is fourth, with an additional 9 million dollars in the sixth week (-19% in revenue compared to last weekend), which allows it to just pass the 300 million dollar mark in the USA. And double on the way Inception, by the same director. It is now the third biggest success of Christopher Nolan in the United States, outside the Batman saga, since only The Dark Knight And The Dark Knight Rises have done better. Worldwide, it reached 777 million dollars, and should easily pass 900 at the end of the race.

Finally, the animated adaptation of Ninja Turtles closes the top 5 thanks to 6.1 million, and is close to 100 in domestic in one month. Two new features are present in the rest of the top: Compensationthe new action film with Liam Neeson, and the religious production The Hillto 3.3 and 2.5 million collected at startup on less than 2000 screens.

Note that this overall high box office is partly due to the American Film Festival, which took place this Sunday: around 3,000 cinemas in the United States participate in the operation and offer their tickets at 4 dollars during the National Cinema Day. This drop in prices for one day makes it possible to attract more audiences to theaters, but this also affects revenue. This strategy of registering more entries but cheaper is generally paying off: the precise results of the day of yesterday have not yet been revealed, but last year, the event had moved more than 8 million spectators in theaters.

US box office weekend August 25-27, 2023:

Barbie brought back an audience that had deserted movie theaters