'Barbenheimer' Craze Leaves Little Box Office Room for 'Haunted Mansion'

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The Disneyland ride-inspired film is expected to open below the second weekend of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer”

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The “Barbenheimer” craze that has lifted the box office to rare heights isn’t expected to stop anytime soon, and that could mean bad things for many films on the late summer slate, including Disney’s “Haunted Mansion,” which hits theaters this weekend and is projected to open below “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” with a launch in the low $30 million range.

Based on the beloved Disneyland ride, “Haunted Mansion” was the first major studio release to host a premiere without striking actors, which was particularly notable for this film given its ensemble cast that includes LaKeith Stanfield, Danny DeVito, Jamie Lee Curtis and Owen Wilson.

But even having the cast to promote “Haunted Mansion” probably wouldn’t be much help, as the family film is getting mixed reviews with a 49% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Such a lukewarm score is a likely death sentence considering the critical and audience acclaim that “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” have earned in the past week and the spectacular midweek numbers both films are putting up.

“Barbie” earned a jaw-dropping $26 million and then matched that total on Tuesday — the best daily totals ever earned by a Warner Bros. film on each of those days — as it has rocketed to a $214 million domestic total in just five days.

“Oppenheimer,” meanwhile, is also performing well after its $82.4 million opening weekend with $12 million earned on Tuesday, bringing its domestic total to $107 million.

A good deal of these two films’ remarkable success has come at the cost of another widely praised film, Paramount’s “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning,” which made $2.4 million on its second Monday in theaters, below the $4.4 million earned by its 2018 predecessor “Mission: Impossible — Fallout.”

With much of the global moviegoing attention getting pulled away from “Mission” and towards “Barbenheimer,” it’s a certainty at this point that “Dead Reckoning” will not match the $220 million domestic or $791 million global totals of “Fallout,” a big problem considering that “Dead Reckoning” carried a pandemic-inflated $290 million budget before marketing.

Again, this is for a franchise film that has received near-unanimous praise from reviewers and moviegoers. If “Mission: Impossible” can’t withstand the power of “Barbenheimer,” there’s even less hope for the tepidly received “Haunted Mansion” even as it takes Dolby and other non-Imax premium screens from “Barbie.”

With a PG-13 rating, “Haunted Mansion” may find itself splitting its core family audience with “Barbie” and likely won’t find general audiences that will make it their first choice outside of hardcore Disneyland fans who will recognize the references to the popular theme park ride and who can recite its spooky narration from “Welcome, foolish mortals” to “a ghost will follow you home.”

Exhibitor Relations analyst Jeff Bock pointed out that “Haunted Mansion” probably won’t be the only film that suffers this fate, as he predicts that several August films like Sony’s “Gran Turismo,” Universal’s “Strays” and even Warner Bros.’ “Blue Beetle” may underperform as “Barbie” keeps legging out. The only film that he believes might have a chance is Paramount’s “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem,” which is tracking for a $40 million opening against a reported $80 million budget and could be a stronger play among nostalgic “TMNT” fans and families with boys.

“Everything is just pointing to ‘Barbenheimer,’ and particularly the ‘Barbie’ half of that, just playing and playing through August,” Bock said. “The movies that are coming will help make next month better than last year where there was almost nothing, but I don’t have high expectations.”

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