'Barbie' is set to win the 'Barbenheimer' box office battle with 'Oppenheimer' on their opening weekend

• "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" will both be released in theaters on July 21.
• Warner expects the film based on the Mattel doll to take up to $80 million in its first three days.

For about a year, a box office battle has been brewing between "Barbie" and Oppenheimer" — the two much-anticipated films from Oscar-nominated directors that are set to be released on exactly the same day.

On July 21, the feud between Greta Gerwig's take on the Mattel doll and Christopher Nolan's epic will come to a head in what has been dubbed "Barbenheimer."

The films' release date may be where the similarities between them end. One film, after all, is about a plastic doll and her boyfriend. The other is about Robert Oppenheimer, the theoretical physicist who helped the United States develop the first nuclear bomb and changed the course of the Second World War.

Given the enduring popularity of Barbie, it's maybe no great surprise that her first outing on the big screen is expected to emerge triumphant.

It's predicted to gross between $70 million and $80 million on its first three days in US theaters, according to internal projections from Warner Bros. seen by The Hollywood Reporter.

That's as much as double the $40 million that Universal Pictures expects "Oppenheimer" to take in the same period, per the report. (Part of the discrepancy may be length: "Oppenheimer" runs for three hours, which means theaters can't squeeze in as many screenings of it as they can of "Barbie," which comes in at a touch under two hours.)

While both movies cost about $100 million to make, the marketing hype for "Barbie" continues to amaze many observers. There's even a full-scale replica of Barbie's Malibu Dream house listed on Airbnb.

No matter who wins, the feud may be less contentious than audiences have been led to believe.

Critics point out that the competing releases are a top-notch example of "counter-programming" by both studios – a reference to simultaneously releasing titles that'll appeal to very different audiences.

The biggest audience for Gerwig's film, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, is likely to be women under 35, per The Hollywood Reporter. The trade publication points out that it's the same demographic that helped turn the "Mamma Mia" and "Sex and the City" movies into box-office monsters.

Nolan, meanwhile, will be hoping that his latest feature, which boasts an A-list cast, erases memories of "Tenet," which bombed after being released in theaters (at his insistence) at the height of the pandemic in 2020.

Of course, as Ryan Gilbey notes for The Guardian, "there will be some overlap between their audiences."

And if you are planning on catching them on the same day, my Insider colleagues Rebecca Cohen and Chris Panella have come up with the perfect schedule for a Barbenheimer double bill, no matter which you see first.

As they point out: "While 'Barbie' calls for fruity cocktails and clubbing with the girls, 'Oppenheimer' gives off more of a black coffee and cigarette energy."

Whichever film takes the weekend, it's unlikely that either one will beat out "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which had the best debut of the year. The Nintendo flick is also the highest-grossing film of 2023, making more than $1.3 billion globally.

"Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3" and "Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse" both made it into nine figures on their opening weekends, taking $120 million and $118 million respectively, according to Comscore figures reported by Variety.

Overall it's been a much better year for theaters, with US ticket sales sitting just over $4.3 billion at the six-month mark – up by 20% over 2022, per Comscore.

That's before the release of more blockbusters, including "Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part One" and, of course, "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer."

And no matter what happens on July 21, one thing is certain: As David Gross, who writes a box office newsletter, told The New York Times: "Audiences are going to find them, and both films are going to do extremely well."