The film “Barbie” reached the Russians through torrents and overtook “Oppenheimer” in popularity

The film “Barbie”, which was never released to the cinemas of the Russian Federation, reached the audience through torrents and overtook Christopher Nolan’s film about Robert Oppenheimer in popularity. So, during the peak period, the number of downloads and distributions on torrents of the Barbie film reached 8 thousand, and Oppenheimer – 4 thousand. The overall level is low, since so far there are only screen copies. But market participants do not expect a change in the popularity ratio, which corresponds to the ratio of world box office, noting that “the mass audience will prefer comedy to drama, especially in a crisis.” And even the current popularity of Oppenheimer, they say, is at least partly due to the fact that, in the perception of the audience, the film has become an unofficial “couple” to Barbie.

“Kommersant” got acquainted with the statistics on the number of facts of downloading and distributing the films “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” around the world through torrents, prepared by the distributor of data on downloads of content Peer Trace. The most popular “Barbie” was in Brazil (July 23, 16 thousand facts), “Oppenheimer” – in India (July 23, 26 thousand facts). The latter also turned out to be more popular than Barbie in Bangladesh (3.6 thousand as of July 24) and Ukraine (874 facts as of July 30). The statistics do not take into account views in pirated online cinemas that usually do not use BitTorrent (see Kommersant of January 25).

Russians are showing more interest in Greta Gerwig’s film than in Christopher Nolan’s. So, on July 29, Peer Trace notes almost 8,000 downloads and distributions of Barbie, while Oppenheimer’s peak on July 26 was only 4,000. By August 2, interest began to wane in both films: Barbie there were 5,000 downloads, Oppenheimer had 2,000. In the first week after the world premiere, Oppenheimer was more popular in Russia, then Barbie took over.

Now on torrents you can find only screen copies (filmed in the cinema) of both films. As a rule, “screens” are very successful only in the first two weeks after the premiere, when the viewer is desperately looking for content, an interlocutor in the media market explains to Kommersant: “Then the hype starts to subside until the digital copy is released.” After that, download rates can increase significantly.

The mentioned films, as well as other blockbusters, did not enter the official Russian distribution because of the hostilities in Ukraine. Since 2022, some cinemas have begun showing unlicensed copies during “pre-screening” for domestic shorts.

But “Barbie” and “Oppenheimer” will not be released in the Russian box office soon, Vedomosti wrote in July. Sources of the publication claimed that the film companies were able to figure out the sellers and the scheme for supplying pirated copies to Russia for large screens by digital labels that the distributor puts when transferring copies of films to cinema networks or cinemas.

Vice Speaker of the State Duma Vladislav Davankov (New People Party) proposed to show the films Barbie and Oppenheimer in cinemas without the consent of the copyright holders. The deputy sent the proposal to Prime Minister Mikhail Mishustin, TASS wrote. According to the deputy, the measure would be “the most optimal support measure, since it will allow the industry to compensate for losses by increasing ticket sales without financial assistance from the Russian budget.” Soon after that, the VODovorOTT Telegram channel reported that pirated copies of films could be brought from Armenia – on August 2, booths with movie announcements already appeared in the Passage shopping center in Yekaterinburg.

“Barbicor” (barbiecore – the use of the style of a Barbie doll) is a big trend this summer, almost all Russian media and Telegram channels participated in it, picked up fashion and citizens, says Expocontent CEO Alexandra Modestova. So, for example, they began to process their photos in the style of Barbie using the application bairbie.me and publish them on social networks.

Deputies of the United Russia party appeared in the State Duma in pink clothes after the premiere of the film “Barbie” on July 26 – deputy Maria Vasilkova published a post about this on her Telegram channel. “Oppenheimer cannot compete with this trend, but the fact that the difference between them in downloads is only two times is already a huge achievement,” notes Alexandra Modestova.

The authors of VODovorOTT note that “comedy is head and shoulders above drama in popularity,” especially during crises: “Escapist plots provide an opportunity to relax. It is hard to imagine that in the current conditions, the mass audience would want to escape from reality by going to a three-hour tape about the creator of the atomic bomb.

According to Insider, Christopher Nolan didn’t like the fact that his film Oppenheimer and Barbie were being released on the same day. Despite this, just the stark contrast in the aesthetics of the two films (Barbie in hot pink, Oppenheimer in half black and white with an orange explosion counterpoint) and their promotion became popular jokes.

At the same time, according to Kommersant’s source on the market, it was Barbie who played a big role in promoting Oppenheimer: “Unlike Warner Bros. large-scale marketing campaigns. Instead, users posted jokes and sold T-shirts with posters of the two films glued together, he notes: “Without them, the three-hour drama would hardly have been such a success.”

Julia Yurasova