Barbie proved to be unstoppable at the box office last year, but it turns out she can be superseded on streaming. And don’t tell Alexandra Shipp’s Writer Barbie, but one of the films triumphing over it is a spinoff of Zack Snyder’s Justice League.
The other two happen to star near-miss Ken Timothée Chalamet, the Warner Bros. It Boy himself, who’s just signed a lucrative first-look deal to keep him at the studio. And who can blame the company for shelling out the big bucks (specific figures have not been revealed, but you can bet it’s bigger than Ken’s ego) when Dune: Part Two is earning universal acclaim and exceeding $575.5 million globally.
Multiply the Chalamet Charm by a double dose of Jason Momoa and you apparently have a formula for streaming success.
Only the combined forces of Timothée Chalamet and Jason Momoa can put Barbie back in her box
As per FlixPatrol, the typically totemic Barbie is no longer in the top three most-watched movies on Max right now, with the gold, silver, and bronze positions on the worldwide charts being claimed by Wonka, Aquaman and the Lost Kingdom, and Dune.
Those three movies cover all three sections of the Chalamet/Momoa Venn diagram. Wonka is a Timmy C vehicle, the Aquaman sequel naturally brings back Momoa as the king of the sea, and Dune features Chalamet as sand messiah Paul Atreides, with Momoa in the supporting role of Duncan Idaho (not the actor’s favorite character name, FYI).
We’re expecting Momoa to return for a cameo in the Dune franchise one of these days, but it seems the pair are inadvertently reuniting sooner than expected for this streaming stratagem to show Barbie who’s boss. Both actors are two of WB’s go-to stars, so clearly the studio needs to cast the pair in some kind of oddball buddy-cop movie and audiences would go gaga for it.
Or, you know, if Jake Gyllenhaal’s imagined Batman needs a Nightwing to help battle Momoa’s Lobo, Chalamet is right there. Send us an email, David Zaslav, and we’ll talk.