Emily Blunt and Ryan Gosling are facing-off at the box office over the July 21-23 weekend with “Oppenheimer” and “Barbie”. But soon, they’ll be joining forces on a major promotion tour. Late last year they filmed “The Fall Guy” together. It’s a Universal action film from “Atomic Blonde”, “Deadpool 2”, “Hobbs & Shaw” and “Bullet Train” director David Leitch, which opens in theaters on March 1, 2024. “The Fall Guy” is based on the ‘80s TV series starring Lee Majors. Blunt and Gosling actually appeared together at CinemaCon earlier this year to get the buzz going.
“Oppenheimer” is one of two major 2023 releases for the Critics Choice, SAG and Golden Globe winning Blunt. The other is Netflix drama “Pain Hustlers”, co-starring Chris Evans, Andy Garcia and Catherine O’Hara, which comes out on October 27th. Director David Yates’ eight previous movies were all for Warner Bros. — the final four “Harry Potter” installments”, all three “Fantastic Beasts” films and 2016’s “The Legend of Tarzan”.
For Gosling, “Barbie” is only his fourth movie released in a six-year period, after last year’s “The Gray Man” (with Evans) on Netflix, 2018’s “First Man” (in which he excellently played Neil Armstrong) and 2017’s “Blade Runner 2049”, alongside Harrison Ford.
The “Barbie” / “Oppenheimer” box office battle has been many, many, many months coming. So much has been dissected, not the least of which is the fact that Christopher Nolan switched from WB to Universal, only to square-off against WB.
PG-13 “Barbie” clocks in at 114 minutes. R-rated “Oppenheimer” is exactly three hours. Competition is always a good thing. “Barbie” will likely win the weekend, though “Oppenheimer” should also do very well. And we’ll see how long they last in theaters before they land on Home Viewing. I have a feeling both will get re-releases and/or expansions — “Barbie” at the end of the summer and “Oppenheimer” during the awards season.