EXCLUSIVE | Barbie Clocks USD 1 Billion At Global Box Office But Fails To Find Takers In India. Experts Reason Why

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Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in lead roles has hit the billion-dollar mark just 17 days after it was released. However, despite is global euphoria, the film has not managed to recreate the same success in India, getting trumped by Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Experts opine

Updated Aug 7, 2023 | 05:44 PM IST

EXCLUSIVE | Barbie Clocks USD 1 Billion At Global Box Office But Fails To Find Takers In India. Experts Reason Why

Greta Gerwig ’s Barbie , starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in lead roles has hit the billion-dollar mark just 17 days after it was released. This means Greta Gerwig has become the first woman to reach the milestone as a solo director, creating a watershed moment in World Cinema. However, despite is global euphoria, the film has not managed to recreate the same success in India, getting trumped by Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer , which seemingly has resonated more with the audience of the country. Trade experts opine this more has to do with the demographic of the country and consumption patterns which are starkly different from those of the West.

Barbie resonates with an ethos that is cultural to the West

Greta Gerwig’s Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling in lead roles has hit the billion-dollar mark just 17 days after it was released

In an exclusive interaction with Zoom, film distributor and business expert Akshaye Rathi said that there are lots of films where these kind of scenarios happen where brands or IPs resonate more with an ethos that is cultural to the West compared to what it is in India.

“Top Gun Maverick, which became one of the top 5 grossers of all times in the West, did not do the kind of numbers we hoped it would in India. So we need to realise India’s ethos, culture, preferences, consumption patterns and brands we have grown up with can be very different from that of the West,” Rathi said, adding, “That is possibly the reason why a film like Margot Robbie’s Barbie did not do the kind of numbers in India as it did in the West.”

Producer and film business expert Girish Johar added that while it is true that the film has not done as well as Oppenheimer in India, one cannot take away from the fact that Barbie is the first woman-directed film to breach that one billion dollar mark globally in cinema.

He goes on to add, “The film has clocked gross Rs 35 crore in India, which is a very good number. Barbie, at the end of the day, is a genre, which has very limited appeal in the country., It lacks commercial elements and is a layered urban film targeting a very niche audience.”

Barbie vs Oppenheimer

Both analysts agree that the fact that Oppenheimer worked more has more to do with consumer pattern in India that anything else. “If you look at a film like Oppenheimer, which released on the same day – India is actually one of the top five grossing markets for the Christopher Nolan film. It is about what resonates with the demographic and psychographic in India with its unique consumption patterns. Perhaps it resonated more with Oppenheimer and Mission Impossible 7 than Barbie. But having said that, we cannot really take away from the fact that Barbie still did very respectable business in India compared to what many would have expected.”

Similarly, Johar opined, “Oppenheimer has clocked more than Rs 100 crore in India, because it is a more linear narrative which has resonated with the audience.”


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