The double feature that brought people to movie theaters in droves last month — known around the internet by the portmanteau “Barbenheimer” — resulted in Cinemark, the nation’s third-largest movie theater chain, seeing its highest domestic box office month in company history, according to the Dallas Morning News.

How did Plano-based Cinemark prepare for the cinematic double whammy of Greta Gerwig’s “Barbie” and Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer”? Wanda Gierhart Fearing, the theater chain’s chief marketing and content officer, sat down with Women in Retail Leadership Circle (WIRLC) in an exclusive interview last month to discuss the record-breaking opening weekend.

“It was a big moment,” she said on stage at the Adolphus Hotel in Downtown Dallas July 26. Cinemark operates 514 theaters in the U.S. and Latin America, with 5,812 screens, and Gierhart Fearing said preparations began months in advance with a look at box office projections for both movies.

“Basically (sales projections) doubled what we thought it would do from two weeks (before opening weekend),” she said.

Prep work also involves negotiating with the studios about how many screens they’re going to get for the films at each theater. She said Cinemark had to tell other studio partners their films had to be put on hold because “This is going to be a tsunami, and we need all the screens we can get.”

Women in Retail members can watch the entire interview with Gierhart Fearing on-demand here. Not a member? Apply today!