Illinois Valley theaters see boost from ‘Barbenheimer,’ sending a message to Hollywood, theater managers say

Whether fans of serious drama with a historical background or lighter fare on the comedic side, local moviegoers showed this past weekend they’re willing to pay to see anything that is done well.

Fans in both Ottawa and Streator streamed into their respective theaters in near pre-COVID numbers to see the debut of two major films, “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer,” with the former coming away a clear favorite.

What’s really interesting here is the message people are sending to Hollywood in the last month is that they want fresh content that’s done well.”

—  Eric Gubelman, owner of Streator Eagle 6

Loretta Fralin-Rapp, one of the shift managers at the Roxy Theater in Ottawa, said “Barbie,” the live-action movie starring Margot Robbie in the title role and Ryan Gosling as Ken, and their characters’ experiences in the real world, overshadowed the story of theoretical physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer and his work on the first atomic bomb.

Nationally, “Barbie” racked up $155 million through its opening weekend and another $182 million internationally, while “Oppenheimer” turned in $80.5 million and $174 million globally. The duo collected $235.5 million in a single weekend, representing the fourth highest-selling box office opening in history (not accounting for inflation).

“Barbie did amazing over the weekend, I would say far overshadowing ‘Oppenheimer’ here in Ottawa,” she said. “‘Oppenheimer’ still did well and movies like ‘Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning’ are doing all right … But ‘Barbie’ has kind of taken over. We had many people come to see [Barbie] dressed up as the characters, in their pink outfits and wigs and everything. It was great.

“The weekend overall did even better than we expected. The last big movie premiere we had was Mario back in May, but this one was right up there with that. Not just kids, too. There were adults, some bringing their kids and teenagers. It was pretty good.”

For Streator’s Eagle 6 theater, owner Eric Gubelman said it experienced a “perfect storm” of films, those two movies being released on the same weekend his theater had a binge of the “Twilight” movies running Friday into Saturday.

“Not only did we have a sellout for ‘Barbie’ and ‘Twilight,’ but also very large crowds for ‘Oppenheimer’ and ‘Mission Impossible,’” Gubelman said. “Up until a week before that, the experts in the industry were not seeing the tidal wave that was coming. The expectations for ‘Barbie’ just kept increasing and increasing and increasing. If you had asked me six months ago if ‘Barbie’ would be the biggest movie of the summer, I would have said I didn’t think so. I thought it would be ‘Indiana Jones’ or ‘Mission Impossible.’

“What’s really interesting here is the message people are sending to Hollywood in the last month is that they want fresh content that’s done well. That’s why a relatively minor movie like ‘The Sound of Freedom’ has done so well. That film, ‘Barbie’ and ‘Oppenheimer’ are fresh and encapsulate what people want Hollywood to know: Less sequels and superheroes, more fresh, original stuff.”

Both Fralin-Rapp and Gubelman feel the theater industry still is not back to where it was before COVID, but as the latter said, this past weekend was a “step in the right direction.”

“It’s a good sign,” Gubelman said. “All of us in the industry were wounded by COVID and we’re trying to find our way back and we have a lot more work to do, but this was very encouraging.”

“People are realizing now that this is a good place, a safe place and they’re starting to come back in numbers, for about nine months to a year now,” Fralin-Rapp said, “but it still has a way to go.”

AMC Theatres, which operates a theater at Peru Mall, reported Saturday as its busiest day since July 2019. In a Monday news release, the company cited the opening weekend of “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” as the driver of a record-breaking weekend since theaters reopened post-pandemic. Theaters throughout the chain were packed Friday, Saturday and Sunday, according to the news release.

The strike by the Writers Guild of American and the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists will play a role in the theater industry’s future, both near and far, depending on when those unions can come to a resolution in the labor dispute.

Ultimately, it could affect the timing of new releases – films such as “The Equalizer 3,” “The Hunger Games: The Ballad of Songbirds and Snakes,” “Wonka” and the remake of “The Color Purple” – are due out in the next few months leading up to the Christmas holidays, one of the most profitable times of the year.

“That needs to get settled quickly because every week past Labor Day adds to a bottleneck down the road,” Gubelman said. “If that happens, we’ll do what we always do, adapt. We have 100 years of films in the vault.

“The hallmark of this industry is adaptability. We’ve adapted to TV, cable, DVDs, digital projection, stadium seating, reclining seating, to streaming and the pandemic. What we do is adapt and we’re going to have to adapt again.”