Margot Robbie Was The Mastermind Behind Barbenheimer All Along
“It’s a perfect double billing.”
This Barbie is a marketing genius! Turns out, Margot Robbie is to thank for the Barbenheimer craze that unexpectedly blew up over the summer. She revealed that an Oppenheimer producer reached out to her to ask her to move Barbie’s premiere date, but she refused, knowing right away that the two polar opposite films would make a “really great pairing.”
When Robbie and Cillian Murphy interviewed each other for Variety’s “Actors on Actors” series on Dec. 5, they couldn’t ignore the pink, atomic elephant in the room. The pair helmed two of 2023’s highest-grossing movies, which just so happened to premiere on the exact same day. After a rough few years for movie theaters, it seemed like everyone was rushing to the big screen the weekend of July 21, 2023. And Barbenheimer was born.
The Barbie/Oppenheimer mashup almost didn’t happen, though, as Robbie told Murphy.
“One of your producers, Chuck Roven, called me,” Robbie recalled. “And he was like, ‘I think you guys should move your date.’ And I was like, ‘We’re not moving our date. If you’re scared to be up against us, then you move your date.’ And he’s like, ‘We’re not moving our date. I just think it’d be better for you to move.’ And I was like, ‘We’re not moving!'”
Robbie’s insistence on Barbie’s premiere date turned out to be right on the money, as moviegoers flocked to both new releases rather than just choosing one.
Robbie confessed that she actually wasn’t surprised by the enthusiastic response.
“It’s a perfect double billing…Clearly the world agreed. Thank God,” Robbie remarked. “The fact that people were going and being like, ‘Oh, watch Oppenheimer first, then Barbie.’ I was like, ‘See? People like everything.’ People are weird…I think they were also really excited by the filmmakers. People were itching for the next Chris Nolan film and itching for the next Greta Gerwig film. To get them at the same time was exciting.”
So, we can all thank Robbie for making Barbenheimer happen by standing her ground when it counted.
