Barbie and Oppenheimer, strike up the Band! Barbenheimer is nipping at your heels as it thumbs its nose at your posture. Heralded by a poster depicting a Barbie-doll silhouette against a nuclear-bomb armageddon, the upcoming B-movie by Charles Band threatens to go viral, if not radioactive, detonated by a combustive tagline like “D-cup, A-bomb.”
The plot of Barbenheimer doesn’t need an Einstein to unravel. Piqued at her treatment by humans, Bambi J. Barbenheimer, a scientist-doll in Dolltopia, tries to unlock the secrets of nuclear physics in an attempt to blow the world to bits. Or, as the film’s synopsis puts it: “They got great looks and a super attitude! Oh, and now they’ve got the bomb.”
Band has been making low-budget horror spoofs for decades, like Puppet Master, Demonic Toys, Doll Graveyard, and Evil Bong 666. The schlock purveyor was quoted in The Hollywood Reporter as saying his newest proferring is “also an opportunity to have fun with the bizarre coupling of these two movies and the combination of Barbie’s vibe and the darkness of Oppenheimer. You mix that together and you have such an opportunity for dark humor.”
“It’s so silly,” Band continued. But it seems like every other feature is dark and depressing, and it’s like, God, we need a little humor going into 2024.”
Band gratuitously admits that the idea for the flick sprang full-blown from the brow of his biographer, Adam Felber: “He called me and was like, ‘We should make Barbenheimer the movie. Everyone around the world is having fun with that notion, so we should actually make it.”
Brian Wecht of Ninja Sex Party wrote the script and some songs for the film, which reportedly has a budget of about $1 million, far less than that of the films it satirizes. Full cast and director are yet to be revealed. Production is expected to start in 2024, once Band completes Bad CGI Gator, his 397th feature, which bears an equally provocative tag-line: “Terror Rendered Too Cheaply.”
Meanwhile, Barbie and Oppenheimer continue to be strong contributors to the post-pandemic and post-writers’ strike screenscape. Thanks in no small part to these two titles, Cinemark reports that “July was its biggest domestic box office month of all time.”
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