Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer can be a path-breaking film. The movie is meant to be watched on the big screens and big screens only. Also, the preferred cinema screens are very specific. Needless to say, the number of IMAXs is so less that many people would watch it anyway in normal movie theaters.
Things are much more difficult for Oppenheimer than it should be. Mission Impossible Dead Reckoning Part One is getting released just 10 days before. And there is no way this film will die in 10 days only, so there will be an issue of screen division.
And let’s acknowledge the elephant in the room. The global buzz and popularity of Barbie is something no recent film in the entire world comes close to. Barbie has a fantastic buzz, and it can easily beat Oppenheimer; on top of that, the promotional campaign of Barbie is something that will set a benchmark for the upcoming many years. We will talk about it in detail someday.
But what about Oppenheimer?
The movie is making zero effort whatsoever to push its reach to the public. When one simple Barbie poster captures the global meme industry, Oppenheimer stills are rarely grabbing attention.
And Universal Studios seems to be doing nothing apart from releasing stills of Cillian Murphy.
Seriously, that’s all they got? Or the film’s budget is so high that producers decided not to promote the film at all.
With a few days remaining, a little more can be done. But we hope Nolan gets his due from the audience and Oppenheimer does well.