Barbie has already grossed more than half a billion dollars globally
A full week after its release, pink-clad fans are still lining up in spades to see Barbie on the big screen
Long ago, Margot Robbie had a That’s-So-Raven style vision and issued a prophecy down to studio execs and the world at large. One day, Greta Gerwig was going to make a movie about plastic dolls with impossible proportions and it was going to make a billion dollars. That’s right: nine zeroes.
Even Robbie didn’t believe the power of her words at the time, telling Collider much later “I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, okay?!” But, like the character she would eventually portray, Robbie was perfectly, almost preternaturally correct. After just one week, Barbie is well on its way to ten digits.
After shattering numerous box office records that people really care about, like best opening day of 2023 (after Spider-Man: Across The Spider-Verse) and best ever opening weekend for a film directed by a woman (after 2019's Captain Marvel), and some that they kind of care about, like Warner Bros.’ best haul on a Monday, the Barbie hype-Corvette shows no sign of slowing any time soon.
Per Deadline, Barbie hit a massive box office haul of $528.6 million globally by Thursday morning, adding $21.4 million to that amount domestically Thursday evening. (Global totals for Thursday are not available yet.) Barbie fever was still so high coming out of the weekend that profits actually increased 3% at the international box office from Tuesday to Wednesday (although they decreased 7% from Wednesday to Thursday).
The other 50% of Barbenheimer is also doing pretty well for itself. While not quite as seismic as Barbie, Oppenheimer is currently sitting at $230 million worldwide and $117.9 million in the U.S. (per Box Office Mojo). The highest-grossing film of the year is still Universal’s The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which brought in $1.3 billion in total during its run. Since Barbie has already made almost half of that amount in just one week, it’s looking possible if not likely that Greta Gerwig’s big gambit is also going to be the biggest movie of the year.