Oppenheimer, Barbie advance booking in India: Christopher Nolan’s film sells 90,000 tickets for opening day, Margot Robbie-starrer trails with 16,000 tickets

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig's directorial Barbie will clash in theatres on July 21.

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer and Greta Gerwig's directorial Barbie will clash in theatres on July 19. (Instagram/Oppenheimer/Barbiethemovie)

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This week, two Hollywood films of completely different genres and target audiences will be clashing at the box office across the world. Filmmaker Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, starring Cillian Murphy in the lead, and Greta Gerwig Barbie, starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, are in a race to woo audiences into theatres. While Oppenheimer has sold 90,000 tickets for day one, Barbie is trailing with 16,000.

As per journalist Himesh Mankad’s social media post, Oppenheimer has sold 90,000 tickets across three multiple-screen chains of PVR, INOX and Cinepolis for the opening day alone. Barbie, which opened advance bookings in India several days after Oppenheimer, has sold 16,000 tickets for its first day.

Also Read | Oppenheimer first reactions call it one of Christopher Nolan’s best films yet: ‘Left me sobbing through the end credits’

Recently, during an interview with Sucharita Tyagi, Cillian revealed that he read the Bhagavad Gita before playing the role of theoretical physicist J Robert Oppenheimer. Oppenheimer famously said that he thought of a quote from the Gita in the immediate aftermath of successfully testing the world’s first atomic bomb in 1945. When the test concluded successfully, Oppenheimer, who was also a student of Sanskrit, thought, “Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.”

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Cillian said, “I did read the Bhagavad Gita in preparation, and I thought it was an absolutely beautiful text, very inspiring. I think it was a consolation to him, he kind of needed it and it provided him a lot of consolation, all his life.” When asked his learnings from Bhagavad Gita, Cillian joked, “Well don’t grill me on it!” The actor then added, “I just found it very beautiful.”

The film also stars Robert Downey Jr, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon and Florence Pugh, is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning book American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J Robert Oppenheimer by Kai Bird and the late Martin J Sherwin.

Barbie stars Margot Robbie as the titular doll, and Ryan Gosling as Ken. In the US, Barbie is expected to handily outperform Oppenheimer in its opening weekend, owing to its wider appeal.

Click for more updates and latest Hollywood News along with Bollywood and Entertainment updates. Also get latest news and top headlines from India and around the World at The Indian Express.

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