Oppenheimer's First Weekend at the Box Office

Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer now looks to finish its run with about $80 million grossed domestically in its first three days.

Even the conventional superhero and animated spectacle tentpoles are lucky to do that well these days--which makes the gross extraordinary for a movie that is not just a historical biography about a scientist set in the 1940s and 1950s, but a "weirdo" postmodernist art film. (Think of it this way: its three-day take matched the take of Mission: Impossible 7 in its first five days of release.)

Still, I am curious to see how the movie does in its second weekend--and if it has not left a significant share of ticket-buyers disappointed or worse. We will learn more about that in the coming weeks.