Barbie Brought Back Moviegoers Who Hadn’t Been In A Theater Since Before The Pandemic – /Film

What does 22% of ticketholders translate to financially when we look at “Barbie’s” box office, which is nearing $1.1 billion? If my math is correct, that’s an added $242 million in ticket sales from people that otherwise wouldn’t have shown up, or around 9 million people. “Barbie” would still be uber profitable had ~$250 mil been shaved off the top of its box office, but this isn’t about the numbers themselves. These numbers point to a view of the audience that theatrical pessimists have long scoffed at or denied: cinema isn’t irrevocably dying as tastes change toward at-home viewing where consumers have maximal choice; it may be that the studios simply aren’t greenlighting the right movies. Or, more likely, that they aren’t marketing them the right way.

Warner Bros. pulled off a marketing campaign for the ages around “Barbie.” For months, every site you visited on the internet, every bus and billboard you passed, and every ad before a YouTube video was shiny, pink, and yes, fantastic. This marketing blitz has even left some with “Barbie fatigue,” but it undeniably worked. There are other reasons for the success of “Barbie,” like decades of brand loyalty accrued around the Mattel product and its coincidental counterprogramming against “Oppenheimer,” which raised ticket sales across the board. People turned out for “Barbie” in a big way, and The Quorum has even more data to put a decidedly optimistic spin on that fact.