[Editor’s Note: This post contains minor spoilers for “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer.”]In April 2022, Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” film, an adaptation of the iconic Mattel doll line starring Margot Robbie, set its release date for July 21, 2023.
The date, as many immediately pointed out, was already the release date of Christopher Nolan’s next film, “Oppenheimer,” a biopic of the creator of the atomic bomb, featuring Cillian Murphy in the title role.Both films had already been linked together for some (specifically the very online); during the early months of 2022, when both films were finalizing casting, it became a Twitter joke that pretty much every performer in Hollywood was in one of the two film’s gigantic ensembles.
Add in some real-world drama involving Nolan’s messy split from Warner Bros., the same company releasing “Barbie,” and soon “Barbenheimer” was born: a jokey rivalry between the two very different features, which eventually evolved into a viral trend of people booking…
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