Did The Summer of Barbie Save The Movies?

The movie business appears to have come back in a big way this summer. Theater owners are having their best summer in years, driven in large part by the blockbuster success of Barbie, which as of mid-August had become the highest grossing movie in Warner Brothers’ 100-year history with box office sales of more than $567 million and counting. Other big attractions included Oppenheimer with gross sales of $285 million domestically and even bigger numbers overseas, as well as the latest entries in the Mission: Impossible and Fast and Furious franchises. The evidence would suggest that given a good enough reason people are willing to leave the house and enjoy an exciting film on the big screen.

That resurgence could be good news for several companies that have gone through the hard times of bankruptcy in the last few years. One of the more interesting and dramatic of these is National CineMedia which is now coming out on the other side of a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing it made in April.