'Gran Turismo' and 'Barbie' Have Photo Finish at the Box Office
by EG
This week's top new movie, Gran Turismo, had a fairly sleepy debut in theaters this week, but thanks to some creative math, its tickets sales may have slightly edged those of Barbie, that blockbuster that was in its sixth weekend of release. No matter the final tally, it's clear that Barbie is still going strong a month and a half after its debut, and it is unquestionably the biggest movie of 2023 so far. Read on for details.
Sony’s late-summer event pic Gran Turismo declared victory at the weekend box office race with a $17.3 million domestic opening, a somewhat muted start for a movie based on a popular video game. The hope now is that an A CinemaScore from audiences will provide a turbo boost in the days to come.
Directed by Neill Blomkamp, the racing pic had been set to launch nationwide on Aug. 11 but switched gears because of the actors strike and the resulting prohibition on the cast -- led by Orlando Bloom and David Harbour -- doing any press. The studio instead hosted two weekends of sneaks and a handful of fan screenings to build buzz before opening the movie everywhere on Aug. 25.
The opening number includes a hefty $3.9 million in grosses from those previous sneaks. It’s hardly the first time that a Hollywood studio has added such grosses to an opening weekend number, but the early Gran Turismo screenings were more robust than is the norm.
Put another way: Warner Bros. and Greta Gerwig’s mega-blockbuster Barbie -- which has now earned an estimated $594.9 million domestically -- would have been assured of topping the weekend chart. Saturday estimates showed Barbie earning $15.7 million from 3,736 locations in its sixth weekend, but Warners bumped up that number to $17.1 million by Sunday morning. (The Barbie team was none too pleased about the Gran Turismo situation.)
Monday actuals will determine the official order. Box office analysts caution that numbers for all films could shift between now and then because of Sunday’s second annual National Cinema Day when tickets will cost $4 for any film in any format at thousands of cinemas across the country. “It will be a wild day in theaters,” says one Hollywood studio distribution chief. (As of early Sunday morning, analytics firm EntTelligence reported that Barbie was in the lead in terms of ticket sales.)
Get the rest of the story at The Hollywood Reporter.