Barbie and Oppenheimer smash the box office in fourth biggest weekend ever

A little way into the movie Gran Turismo, the unlikely brand extension of Sony’s sim racing games accidentally satirizes itself. “This whole thing is a marketing extravaganza!” excitable auto executive Danny Moore (Orlando Bloom) shouts at salty racing coach Jack Salter (David Harbour). They’re aboard a helicopter wheeling above a racetrack, where Salter’s students in the GT Academy — a real-life program intended to turn players of Sony’s Gran Turismo games into actual racing drivers — are being put through their paces. The helicopter is an absurd bit of theater for the TV cameras, and Salter knows it. But he’s powerless to resist the marketing apparatus around him.

Gamereactor interviewed two key members from IO Interactive Barcelona at Spain's Gamelab 2023 event, and they got a few tidbits on the studio's two biggest upcoming games: Project 007 and Project Fantasy.

Barbie continues her dominance atop the box office charts, landing at No. 1 for the third week after taking in $53M (-43%), per Deadline. The Margot Robbie-led comedy has collected $459.4M domestically and crossed the $1B worldwide ($527.7M internationally) tally. That’s just crazy.

Barbie has now made $1 billion at the box office – and there's no sequel on the horizon. Neither writer-director Greta Gerwig nor her co-writer (and real-life partner) Noah Baumbach has a contract for Barbie 2, but that doesn't mean the studio hasn't tried to convince Gerwig. 

Every character in Greta Gerwig’s Barbieis perfectly crafted perfection. The dolls — Stereotypical Barbie, Beach Ken, and dorky Allan, among others — steal the spotlight, but Gerwig considers her human characters, the ones who give these toys ideas and conflicts, too. There’s the goofy Mattel CEO (Will Ferrell) and abrasive teenager Sasha (Ariana Greenblatt).

The Wheel of Time season 2 is set to feature "one of the biggest battles ever", say producers Marigo Kehoe and Sanaa Hamri. It'll also be reminiscent of epic historical dramas like Cleopatra and Gladiator too, apparently, which has boosted our already existing excitement...

Capcom’s Resident Evil 2 remake has sold more copies than any other title in the horror franchise’s 27-year history, after passing 12.6 million cumulative lifetime sales across console and PC.

Even before I got to the theater, I saw the pink.

Bet you'd never imagine reading this sentence: Evil Dead Rise fans have spotted a parallel between the horror sequel and Barbie. It's a stretch, yes, and it's toe-tally weird to boot, but they've spotted it – and taken to Twitter to highlight it. 

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie is finally upon us, and audiences love it. The comedy starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the eponymous doll and her maybe-boyfriend Ken has made big money at the box office, with audiences and critics both effusively praising the film’s extravagant production design and pitch-perfect soundtrack alongside Robbie’s and Gosling’s sensational performances.

After seeing Greta Gerwig’s Barbie movie and playing Hello Kitty Island Adventure last weekend, I have to wonder: Is it cool to be a girl again? But actually. We’ve gotten glittering pop tracks featuring Power Puff Girl-inspired visuals from NewJeans and Gerwig’s movie has been released to theaters to seemingly universal fanfare and pink. Now, fans of mobile games get a little cherry on top: a social sim featuring Sanrio’s cast of characters. The summer of 2023 has been a great season for media aimed at women and girls.

Barbie is consistently hilarious, but it might not have been the case if Greta Gerwig snuck in a joke that she thought was “really funny” – and no one else agreed.