THE TOTAL IRISH box office revenue hit €101 million last year, helped in a large part by the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon.
The social media fuelled Barbenheimer started out as good-natured competition between two aesthetic opposites, with both movies benefitting in the end.
According to figures released today by the Irish Film Classification Office (IFCO), Barbie grossed €9,934,084 at the Irish box office last year.
This is considerably ahead of Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer, which starred Cillian Murphy as J Robert Oppenheimer, one of the creators of atomic weapons.
It grossed €6,428,777 in Irish cinemas last year.
The Super Mario Brothers Movie rounds out the top three, having grossed €5,168,926 last year.
The same three movies also topped the home entertainment charts.
Just under 280,000 DVD and Blu-ray units were sold last year in Ireland, down 28% on 2022’s figures.
Last year, Barbie sold 4,317 copies in Ireland.
Oppenheimer came in a close second, with 4,299 units sold, and The Super Mario Brothers Movie took third spot at 4,007.
The Banshees of Inisherin, released in 2022, ranked fourth with 3,228 units sold while Irish language film An Cailín Ciúin (The Quiet Girl) took ninth spot with 2,210 copies sold.
Despite home entertainment sales being down more than a quarter last year when compared with 2022, the IFCO’s director of film classification Dr Ciarán Kissane remarked that it is “still a significant market in Ireland”.
He noted that sales declined by over 50% during the pandemic and also cautioned that the “the market for discs remains unpredictable”.
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