"Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" Debuts Lift Weekend Box Office to Four-Year High

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"Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" Debuts Lift Weekend Box Office to Four-Year High

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Cinemas finally have something to celebrate.

Barbie, a comedy about the famous fashion doll, and Oppenheimer, a biography of the inventor of the atomic bomb, brought out movie fans in droves, helping box office revenue this weekend more than double from a year earlier to about $302 million.

Warner Bros.' Barbie was the top picture in US and Canadian cinemas, taking in $155 million in ticket sales, researcher Comscore said Sunday. That also gave it the highest-grossing debut of the year, edging past the $146.4 million haul from April's The Super Mario Bros. Movie. The film made its debut the same weekend as director Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which brought in $80.5 million.

The simultaneous releases energized theatergoers, helping cinemas turn in the best weekend since Avengers: Endgame made its debut in April 2019.

Vocabulary:

Theatregoers - people who go to the theatre

in droves - many people moving

highest grossing - most amount of money earned before tax

haul - a large amount

brought out - made people come out to do or see something

edging - slowly moving