Barbenheimer, Glicked, and Mission: Stitch - The Rise of Counterprogramming Double Features
Ever since 2021 when movie theaters across the country began opening their doors again after the COVID-19 pandemic, distributors, exhibitors, and even filmmakers themselves have been fighting to determine exactly what it is that will make audiences come back to the movie theater. Spider-Man: No Way Home was the first spectacular hit, so of course more superhero movies featuring cameos from old, returning characters went into production. Top Gun: Maverick rode strong word-of-mouth to become the biggest film of 2022, so more studios began filming movies specifically for IMAX and also producing more grounded blockbusters along the lines of Twisters and the upcoming F1. And then, there was Barbenheimer.
It’s been less than two years since that fateful day in moviegoing, and it’s hard to tell what effects the massive success of Barbie and Oppenheimer as individual movies will have on the industry over the next decade. Maybe more self-aware, meta comedies about action figures will begin dominating theaters, or biopics about controversial men in American history will be the next big trend. But one major effect that Barbenheimer has had on the film industry since then is the clever arrangement of the release calendar to have two major titles dropping on the same date.
This weekend, both Lilo & Stitch and Mission: Impossible - The Final Reckoning hit cinemas. They’re arguably the two most anticipated movies of May, with Lilo building strong buzz among millennials who loved the original and can now share it with their kids, and M:I selling lots of advance tickets based on the rumor that this might be the last film in the long-running franchise. But instead of each film being given plenty of space on the calendar, Disney and Paramount are releasing them on the same day in the hopes that the anticipation for both films will propel them to even greater heights than if they were released separately.
This wouldn’t be the first time that major studios have tried to astroturf a viral double-feature campaign in the spirit of Barbenheimer. Last November, right around Thanksgiving, Universal released the first Wicked film while Paramount released Gladiator II on the same day, leading to one of the biggest moviegoing weekends of 2024. On a smaller scale, earlier this year, Sony pushed the U.S. release of Paddington in Peru to serve as counterprogramming to the release of Marvel’s Captain America: Brave New World.
None of these turned into the next Barbenheimer, but all movies involved were financial successes. Lilo: Impossible or Mission: Stitch will likely end up being the highest grossing weekend of 2025 so far, so this will likely continue to be a trend for the foreseeable future. But what was the magic behind the success of Barbenheimer, and what can distributors and exhibitors do to create another word-of-mouth campaign that drives big business to their theaters? Here’s some ideas we have:
1. Make Good, Original Movies
It’s not enough to just build anticipation around new installments of established franchises; studios interested in programming their big films on the same day as another big film need to make sure, above all else, the film they’re releasing is the best it can possibly be. Barbenheimer was built around excitement for two films that looked exciting and fresh, providing something that moviegoers had not seen much of before. For Barbie, it was the bright and handcrafted art direction and the slyly satirical comedy mixed with heartwarming sentiment. While, for Oppenheimer, it looked like a historical film that felt lively, exciting, and meaningful on a scale that most period pieces don’t get the chance to be. And all the anticipation for both films wouldn’t mean a thing if they weren’t both extremely good films that used word-of-mouth to deliver such a huge opening and continued to bring audiences back to theaters for months afterwards.
2. Counterprogramming, but Not Too Much
The first Barbenheimer memes I saw, months before either film was released, joked about the supposed sharp contrast between the two films. Barbie was the pink house while Oppenheimer was the black house next door; Barbie was the girl’s toy in the Happy Meal while Oppenheimer was the boy’s toy. But these two seemingly disparate films actually shared a pretty similar audience: Namely, the audience of people who were interested enough in both Barbie and Oppenheimer to make memes about it. The counterprogramming in this case wasn’t about giving completely separate audiences options of what to watch, but giving similar audiences a variety of tone and style. Most of the online chatter around both films centered around the directors helming each film, Greta Gerwig and Christopher Nolan, and how they crafted $100-million films that felt like personal visions for them. Among movie lovers, you already had a lot of crossover appeal by promoting both films as exciting new works from great artists, but providing such wildly different tones gave people an excuse to create their own double features as an exercise in contrast between screwball comedy and serious biopic.
3. Familiar faces, but not tired faces
The star system is in a funny place in 2025. Movie stars are still one of the primary forces behind investors choosing to back a film, and studios being able to pre-sell a movie to foreign distributors, but it’s not like the 90s or 2000s where any Will Smith or Jim Carrey movie opened huge just because they were in it. Just based on what films have become popular in the last few years, it seems that today’s moviegoer is interested in the stars of their film fulfilling one of two purposes. For one, they could be a longtime film industry vet reprising a role their famous for (see the multiple Spider-Men in Spider-Man: No Way Home, Cruise in Top Gun: Maverick, or Hugh Jackman in Deadpool & Wolverine). But for audiences who aren’t as sold on the concept of nostalgia, it’s nice to see stars stepping outside of their comfort zone and getting roles that audiences might not be as familiar with.
In Barbie, Ryan Gosling got to really flex his excellent comedic chops in a way most audiences weren’t used to seeing from him (especially if they missed Shane Black’s wildly entertaining The Nice Guys). Meanwhile, Oppenheimer saw veteran character actor and TV star Cillian Murphy stepping into the lead role of a large-scale movie, surrounded by a huge ensemble of supporting players given the chance to step outside of their normal roles, especially Robert Downey Jr. as the vindictive Lewis Strauss and an older Josh Hartnett who hadn’t appeared in a movie of this scale for nearly 20 years. On top of being quality films from great directors, getting a chance to see familiar faces in a different context than what most audiences know them for really helped to solidify the success of both films.
4. Looks Aren’t Everything, Except When They Are
From the second people started joking about Barbenheimer as a double feature concept, the looks had already been established: Barbie was pink and Oppenheimer was black or grey. Barbie had dresses or pink jumpsuits while Oppenheimer had suits or short-sleeved shirts with porkpie fedora hats. It’s not like the movies were heavily promoted on the idea that people should dress up or wear costumes to go see these films, but with general excitement in the air for both, it helped that each had a distinct aesthetic that groups of friends could co-opt to show their excitement across social media. The marketing team behind Wicked also knew the value of a good aesthetic hook, because everywhere you turned in late 2024, you would see audiences dressing up in pink or green, or carrying their pink/green Wicked souvenirs.
If you know a movie coming to your theater is highly anticipated by younger audiences, it’s worth studying the marketing materials to determine if there’s an aesthetic hook you can utilize in your theater. For instance, you can decorate your lobby to reflect key colors in the film’s promotional materials, you can have your staff dress up in recognizable clothes that remind people of the film, or even do meet-and-greets with people dressed as the characters from the film. If a film is being sold heavily on a specific look like Barbenheimer was, then the opportunities to utilize that look on the exhibition level are endless.
So What About Mission: Stitch?
Whether or not Disney and Paramount actually scheduled two of their biggest summer titles on the same day in the hopes of creating a viral Barbenheimer-type buzz is pure conjecture, of course, but it seems like there have been too many crowded weekends with multiple big movies being released on the same day to be mere coincidence. The question is: Will there be any buzz for audience members to see both films in a double feature-style presentation á la Barbenheimer?
As of right now, based on our analysis of why Barbenheimer was such a success, it seems like the criteria isn’t there for these two to work as a box office-smashing double feature like Barbenheimer did. Both films have gotten solid reviews so far, but the praise isn’t nearly as unanimous or effusive as it was for both Barbie and Oppenheimer. They’re also not being sold as auteurist, director-driven films despite both coming from acclaimed filmmakers (Lilo & Stitch being the second film from the director of Marcel the Shell with Shoes On), and they’re playing to such different audiences that the people who are excited to Lilo & Stitch aren’t also planning to rush out to buy Mission: Impossible tickets.
Will Barbenheimer ever be fully recreated? I don’t believe that a viral campaign on that level can be predetermined in any way. The joy of Barbenheimer was that it was a joke that caught on because people were genuinely excited to see both films. However, enough good movies come out every year that studios and distributors could create the conditions that might lead to the next Barbenheimer, and it certainly seems like they’ve tried that a few times with big double-feature opening weekends. I just believe the movies need to be good above all else, the directors and stars still need a bit of cultural cache, and the movies should get a distinctive look, and the word-of-mouth ought to carry it from there.