“Barbenheimer” was a “delightful surprise” for Warner Bros.; “At first, people wanted to pit the two films against each other,” Studio Marketer tells Ad Confab

“Barbenheimer” was completely unexpected, but the studio figured it out Barbie “I was happy to speak,” said Dana Nussbaum, EVP of global marketing at Warner Bros. Pictures is calling the unusual double feature one of the few unforeseen and welcome twists in the launch of Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster.

“It was definitely a surprise for us. But one that we found incredibly enjoyable,” she said during a question-and-answer session at New York Advertising Week.

The Margot Robbie lead actors rage and Oppenheimer, “Universal’s biopic of Robert Oppenheimer, the father of the atomic bomb, couldn’t be more different,” she said. “It was a good example of a surprise. By the way, I’d like to admit it, but [it was] Absolutely, not by our design at all. It’s something that happened very organically, but something we went for.”

“When we saw that it was out there and that it was being talked about, we made sure that Greta and Margo… went and looked Oppenheimer. They took a picture and it created this whole atmosphere that was so amazing because in the beginning people wanted to pit the two films against each other.

Barbie grossed more than $1.4 billion worldwide ($635 million domestic). The film opened alongside Christopher Nolan’s film on July 21 and grossed $942 million internationally ($323 million domestically).

“We realized there was room for both, and what a wonderful celebration of culture and movies to have room for both and fulfill that dual function in its entirety,” Nussbaum said.

The film blanketed the world in pink and flooded social media with a masterful marketing campaign that saw fans follow everything from a Chrissy Teigen Barbie shoe challenge to Ryan Gosling’s ballad “I’m Just Ken” – most recently parodied by Pete Davidson and further SNL Last weekend.

Barbie is now the highest grossing film at Warner Bros.’ 100-year history, the highest-grossing film by a female filmmaker ever at the domestic box office and the biggest worldwide theatrical release of 2023. It takes Mattel’s iconic doll on a journey of female empowerment that is an integral part of the story , but Nussbaum said: The studio didn’t force it.

“None of us realized that this was a very big responsibility, but also a big opportunity. But we took great care to design this campaign with personalization in mind so that the audience can decide how they interact with it. We never set up the film as a feminist story, we never said anything about it because we wanted everyone to have their own experience, just as we were all pleasantly surprised by the film when we first saw it has. We wanted to keep that discovery and that surprise for the audience and let the audience decide what they respond to and what’s really meaningful to them.”

When WB executives “first read the script, it was very clear that Greta really gave us this film,” she said, “and that there was something in it that, if we did it right, we would .” really an opportunity to not only create a cultural moment, but also to change things in a meaningful way. To really change what it looks like to be a tentpole film and how do you know if female directed films are breaking into the space, who they are and how they’re doing at the box office.