‘Barbenheimer’ Audience Data Reveals Parallel Talent Demand Growth And Opposing Demographics [Parrot Analytics]

Friday, 21 July 2023, 6:30 am
Press Release: Parrot Analytics

With Warner Bros.’ Barbie and Universal’s Oppenheimer set to debut on Friday, Parrot Analytics has assessed the global demand for talent and audience demographics data for each film.

The two movies, from diametrically opposing genres, have both received critical acclaim, prompting audiences to discuss a potential double feature of Barbie and Oppenheimer on the same day — aka Barbenheimer.

The Barbenheimer phenomenon has evolved from a simple meme into 40,000 people (and counting) purchasing the double feature at AMC theaters alone. This warrants a further look at the demand drivers for the two movies, including talent demand for the cast and an understanding of what type of audiences they are likely to draw to theaters.

Cast Comparison

The global audience demand for both casts has increased significantly in the lead up to their joint debut.
The global demand for the cast of Oppenheimer increased 201% between April 23 and July 16. Over the same time period, the global demand for the cast of Barbie grew 223%.
In both cases, most of this growth has occurred in the last few weeks as marketing for each movie increased, and also as the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon picked up steam.
It’s remarkable that the demand for both casts grew at almost the same rate, showing how closely associated with one another each of these movies has become.

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Top 10 Actors by Demand

Both movies feature ensemble casts with highly recognizable actors, although the Barbie stars shine brighter with global audiences than the cast of Oppenheimer, at least for now.
Barbie herself, Margot Robbie, has by far the highest global demand of any of the two movies' actors heading into opening weekend. From June 17-July 16, 2023, Robbie was 39.9x more in-demand than the average talent worldwide. This places her into our Exceptional demand bucket, meaning she was in the top 0.04% of all talent across all professions during this time.
Before Oppenheimer, Cillian Murphy’s highest profile role was as Thomas Shelby in the BBC/Netflix Original Peaky Blinders. In the thirty days after that show’s series finale debuted on Netflix in 2022, Murphy’s global demand was 6.76x. During the final lead up to the Oppenheimer debut, Cillian Murphy’s demand is all the way up to 18.8x — a 178% increase over his post-Peaky Blinders demand.

Audience Demographic Data

The audiences for each movie serve as almost mirror images of one another when it comes to both gender and age breakdowns.
Unsurprisingly, the Barbie audience is 66.2% female, while Oppenheimer’s audience is 70.7% male.
Barbie’s audience is significantly younger, with 74.6% under the age of 29, with nearly half (46.6%) below the age of 22. A majority of Oppenheimer’s audience is over 30 (52.9%).

Parrot Analytics

Global television demand measurement

Parrot Analytics is the leading global content demand analytics company for the multi-platform TV business. With the world's largest TV audience demand datasets, the company currently tracks more than 1.5B daily expressions of demand in over 100 languages from 200+ countries to reveal the content consumers engage with and watch the most across platforms.

As a trusted partner to some of the biggest media companies and content creators in the world, Parrot Analytics optimises content workflows in real time. The company's TV analytics products result in better production, distribution, acquisition and marketing decisions, as well as accelerated SVOD platform success.