And Oppenheimer – a three-hour, often black-and-white historical political drama – was caught up in the chain reaction, earning over $174 million, with IMAX cinemas now sold out weeks in advance. Already, Barbie has made $344 million worldwide, with a record-breaking $162 million debut in the States – giving Greta Gerwig the mantle of highest-grossing opening weekend for a female director. And it all came under one ridiculous name: ‘Barbenheimer’. There were celebratory t-shirts designed specifically for the event. There were countless discussions of the ideal viewing order.

And yet, if you made it out to the cinema this weekend – having most likely pre-booked your tickets, rapidly becoming gold dust as entire picturehouses sold out – you’ll have seen foyers flooded with people doing the most (seemingly) deranged double-bill of recent memory: Christopher Nolan’s soul-rattling atomic bomb creation story Oppenheimer, and Greta Gerwig’s fuchsia fantasia toy story Barbie.

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