A masterfully-marketed, cleverly conceived and brilliantly-acted SATIRE about a skinny “stereotypical” “perfect” plastic doll is melting down the late July box office with an opening weekend for the ages.

Warner Bros. was whispering “$75,” everybody else was saying “$125” but America’s women and girls and guys comfy in pink have MOBBED theaters since opening…afternoon.

Holy Plastic Pink and Pastel Mother of Gerwig, what hath Greta wrought?

I caught a packed “Barbie” (review here) showing Thursday at 3, a crowd deliriously applauding a movie in suburban Orlando before it ended, and left the theater at 830 with a lobby packed like a Pepto-Bismol meets Mary Kay sales meeting.

The film future is “pink.” Maybe there’s a political statement mixed in with this, too. You think? The usual conservative suspects are losing their cotton-candy minds over it.

“Biggest opening ever for a movie directed (and co-written) by a woman” probably drives them nuts, too.

The Hollywood Reporter is saying “$155,” Box Office Pro was hedging “$158+.” Deadline.com was saying “$150,” steamrollering a pre-pandemic level HUGE weekend, with over $308 million in tickets to all movies sold by midnight Sunday. That’s the biggest single-pic opening and biggest weekend of the moviegoing year.

It’s the fourth biggest movie weekend of all time, the biggest with no sequels or franchise, comic book movies in it. There’s life after Iron Man/Batman/Wonder Woman after all.

Deadline.com is reporting that the career-making Margot Robbie star-vehicle conceived and directed by Greta Gerwig as a FEMINIST manifesto did over over $1 million from a 500 theater Wed. opening, $22 million just Thursday afternoon and evening, all folding in to a Friday that pushed”Barbie” over $70 million by midnight Friday.

What did the playwright George S. Kauffman say? “Satire is what closes Saturday night.” Not this satire. Not this Saturday.

Overseas, it’s pulling in a $40 million+ weekend, creamy cocoanut frosting on a Dolly Parton cake, I tell you what.

Stunning. It’s not animated, not “Pixar” branded, not a comic book movie, sequel or otherwise, NOT A FRANCHISE. Yet. An original movie with wit and “womanist” messaging is remaking the summer cinema.

The three hour Epic-in-Every-Way “Oppenheimer” is rolling to a $80.2 million weekend after a $10 million Thursday added to a Friday “opening day” of $33 million.

All this despite limited showings because A) it’s NOT “Barbie,” B) it’s very long and B), it’s competing for IMAx screens with “Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning” ($$19.5 million), which is falling off well over 50% this weekend from last, and the weekday-popular (when all the retirees go to the movies) “Sound of Freedom,” which is falling off to a $20 million weekend after clearing the $100 million mark this week. It’ll be over $120 million by midnight Sunday, and will probably start losing screens — as will “Indy” and every other pre-July 4 movie, next week.

“Oppenheimer” is also on track to earn over $16 million from international markets on opening weekend.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” has been in theaters since June and will pull in another $6.7 million for fifth place, over $160 by Midnight Sunday. It is winding up its run and shedding screens and that’s that.

Lionsgate’s unmarketed horror release “Cobweb” may crack the top ten, somewhere around “Insidious: The Red Door” on its third weekend.