Barbie is riding a pink convertible toward a $70M-$80M opening, Oppenheimer to blast off with a $40M box office debut

The hottest film event of the summer is fast approaching! That’s right, folks! Two film industry titans, Barbie and Oppenheimer, will soon battle it out for box office supremacy! Before you bet on who wins the top spot on the charts, see what analysts predict for the July 21-23 weekend.

Tracking for both films is interesting, to say the least. Great Gerwig‘s Barbie could open to a peppy $70 million-$80 million, with an opportunity to make more. Warner Bros, who’s licking its wounds after The Flash underperformed, is holding out for $60M, just to be cautious.

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie introduces several Barbie and Ken variants, each with a different personality, background, and status in a bizarre world of partying, shopping, beachside brawls, and feeble attempts at flirtation. The footage piles on the strange as Barbie and Ken seemingly travel to the real world, where everything becomes more unhinged than it was before.

The Barbie cast includes many of Hollywood’s heavy hitters and fresh faces, including Margot Robbie (The Suicide Squad) and Ryan Gosling (La La Land) as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera (End of Watch), Kate McKinnon (The Spy Who Dumped Me), Michael Cera (Arrested Development), Ariana Greenblatt (Borderlands), Issa Rae (Insecure), Thea Perlman (Matilda), and Will Ferrell (Elf). The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne (Little Women), Emma Mackey (Sex Education), Nari Nef (Transparent), Alexandra Shipp (the X-Men films), Kingsley Ben-Adir (Secret Invasion), Simu Liu (Shang-Chi and the Legend of the Ten Rings), Ncuiti Gatwa (Doctor Who), Scott Evans (Grace and Frankie), Jamie Demetriou (Cruella), Connor Swindells (Emma), Sharon Rooney (Dumbo), Nicola Coughlan (Bridgerton), Ritu Arya (The Umbrella Academy), Dua Lipa, and Helen Mirren (The Queen).

Greta Gerwig directs from a screenplay she wrote with Noah Baumbach, based on Mattel’s rich history with the Barbie toy brand. The film’s producers are Oscar nominee David Heyman (Marriage Story, Gravity), Robbie, Tom Ackerley, and Robbie Brenner, with Michael Sharp, Josey McNamara, Ynon Kreiz, Courtenay Valenti, Toby Emmerich, and Cate Adams serving as executive producers.

As for Oppenheimer, Universal and Christopher Nolan‘s epic starring Cillian Murphy is tracking for $40M in domestic dollars. Part of the reason Oppenheimer is tracking lower than Barbie is likely because of the film’s R rating and 3-hour runtime. While Barbie plays for multiple demographics, Oppenheimer is an adult-oriented film. Additionally, there were other times one of Nolan’s films came in second place. 2014’s Interstellar opened behind Disney’s Big Hero 6 with $47.5 million, though it eventually climbed to an impressive $701.7 million global total.

Oppenheimer is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J. Sherwin. It features an all-star cast that stars Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey, Jr., Matt Damon, Rami Malek, Florence Pugh, Benny Safdie, Michael Angarano, Josh Hartnett, and Kenneth Branagh. The cast also includes Dane DeHaan (Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets), Dylan Arnold (Halloween franchise), David Krumholtz (The Ballad of Buster Scruggs), Alden Ehrenreich (Solo: A Star Wars Story) and Matthew Modine (The Dark Knight Rises).

Which film do you plan to see first in theaters? Barbie or Oppenheimer? I’m Team Barbie, but I also look forward to seeing Nolan’s latest opus. Let us know which movie you’ll see first in the comments section.