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Cinemas are already booked out ahead of the release of the highly anticipated Barbie movie, as the enduring appeal of the 64-year-old doll drives demand for opening week screenings.
The film, starring Australian Margot Robbie in the eponymous role, is not released until July 20. But enthusiastic ticket sales to themed previews and opening night sessions of Barbie’s first live-action feature mean some cinemas believe it will be their most popular film of the year.
Barbie fans Rio Berry, Jacinta Gregory, Kenny Murphy and Juliet Timmerman will be seeing the movie opening week.Credit: Louise Kennerley
“It’s a film phenomenon I don’t think we’ve seen this side of 2020,” said Kristian Connelly, CEO of Melbourne’s Cinema Nova, where the first screenings of Barbie have sold out, with most interest from women and the queer community.
“It promises to be a very fun and also a shared experience, and we haven’t had a film quite like that in a long time. We’ve had more group bookings for this film than any other in living memory,” he said.
The cinema has carefully programmed the film’s opening weekend, scheduling alternating screenings of Barbie and Christopher Nolan’s biographical thriller Oppenheimer, which also opens July 20, to meet demand from audiences for a “Boppenheimer” double feature.
In Sydney, the Hayden Orpheum in Cremorne quickly realised one screen for its “ladies night” Barbie preview – attendees receive a glass of pink sparkling and can take photos inside a life-sized Barbie box – on July 19 would not be enough. After the first cinema’s 700 seats sold, it added two extra sessions, both of which have now also sold out.
Five theatres will be filled for the Randwick Ritz’s preview night “pink party”, with about 1600 film goers expected.
Jacinta Gregory, 28, has organised a group of 70 friends and friends of friends to see the film in costume at their local Hoyts in Sydney on opening night.
“Not since Legally Blonde was there a movie so unashamedly and proudly oozing feminine pride,” she said.
While she did grow up loving Barbies, for Gregory the film’s appeal goes beyond memories of the toy.
“It’s not just the nostalgia of how much we all loved the dolls, it’s the nostalgia relating to how much we loved all things pink and silly and fun as kids, and how much we were told those things weren’t to be taken seriously,” she said.
“But now, as adults, this movie is for the little girls inside of us. And this time we are loud and proud.”
Connelly said he expected Barbie would be the most popular of the northern summer releases, likening it to Shrek for pitching itself at both children and adults.
With its customer base skewing female, Palace Cinemas is tipping Barbie to be its highest grossing film of the year. The chain recorded its highest ever preview screening sales for showings on the Wednesday night.
“The pre-sales are higher than we had for movies like James Bond No Time to Die and Top Gun: Maverick,” said Palace’s head of marketing, Alex Moir, who compared the interest to a Marvel movie.
Previews at Palace’s Kino and Pentridge cinemas in Melbourne, and Verona and Central cinemas in Sydney had sold out by the middle of last week. They will feature themed drinks and (as appears to be standard) life-sized Barbie boxes for photos.
A spokesperson for Event Cinemas, Australia’s largest cinema chain, said its advance screenings were also “selling fast”.
The cultural moment labelled by US Vogue as “the summer of Barbie” reached the antipodean winter last month when Robbie and director Greta Gerwig arrived in Sydney on their international press tour.
But Barbie in 2023 is as much about Gerwig’s film as the marketing megalith orbiting it – from official movie tie-ins, to completely unaffiliated businesses capitalising on the hype.
The Barbie brand has been emblazoned everything from Cotton On T-shirts to X-Box consoles to Bondi Junction bus stops. In Sydney and Melbourne, several nightclubs are getting in on the action, with Barbies vs Kens parties and other themed nights.
The Barbie bus stop on Oxford Street, Bondi Junction in Sydney.Credit: Louise Kennerley
University of Sydney consumer behaviour researcher Associate Professor Tom van Laer said the marketing strategy for the film was seeking to create a “narrative transportation effect”.
“When people lose themselves in a story they want to be the main character. So, when they can’t do that, they buy stuff related to them,” he said.
For van Laer, Barbie’s months-long promotional tour is likely explained by its summer release in the Northern Hemisphere, where audiences have checked out from the news cycle. But interest is also being carried along by a post-pandemic obsession with entertainment experiences (think: Taylor Swift tickets).
It also helps, van Laer said, that the Barbie brand is easy to put onto “stuff”.
“Barbie isn’t just a character, she is also a colour, and there are very few fictional characters that are so associated with one colour,” he said.
“If you look at the Marvel movies, yes, they sell Spider-Man backpacks. But there isn’t one colour that sells Spider-Man to the public. But Barbie – Barbie is pink.”
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