Dune: Part Two, the highly anticipated sequel to the first movie of the same name, was released on March 1 globally. It has done decent numbers in terms of earnings so far, with the movie being critically acclaimed, just like its first installment.
The success of Dune: Part One saw it gross a worldwide revenue of around $435 million and get nominated in ten categories at the 94th Academy Awards, including Best Picture. This meant the hype around its second installment was astronomical, and the film has so far done really well, closing in on the milestone of $200 million globally within a week of its release.
With the anticipation for Dune: Part Two reaching such heights, there was bound to be excitement among netizens and streamers for its release. That is why Streams Charts has analyzed the number of mentions of the film compared to two summer blockbusters from 2023 — Barbie and Oppenheimer — in Twitch chats to see how they compared in terms of popularity.
The movie based on the eponymous fashion dolls by Mattel, the first live-action Barbie film ever, emerged as the most talked about, garnering almost 53K mentions across the purple platform. Dune's second part scored a decent 13.4K mentions, but that was the least of the three flicks in question, as Oppenheimer scored around 17K mentions.
Interestingly, the term "Barbenheimer," coined by online users to describe hype around both pictures that were released on the same day, scored around 2K mentions. Barbie scored as high as it did thanks to the massive following the brand has accrued over the decades, while the movie about atom bomb creator J. Robert Oppenheimer was a lot more serious, meaning it was targeted at a more mature audience.
One interesting trend is that while Barbie and Oppenheimer were more popular on their release days, the number of mentions in the subsequent few days came down. However, that is not the case for Dune: Part Two, which has seen its popularity rise among netizens on Twitch, even overtaking Christopher Nolan's masterpiece by the number of mentions by the third day. Even content creators who either saw the movie or read its reviews were busy discussing it days after it came out in theatres.
This shows that the film has so far done pretty well for itself and has more or less matched the pre-release hype, and there is no doubt it'll achieve cult status. In terms of success, only a week has passed since its release, so there's lots of time for gross revenue collection numbers to come out. For now, director Denis Villeneuve can rest easy knowing both flicks in his two-part adaptation have worked wonders at the box office.