Barbie Is Officially The Highest-Grossing Movie Of The Year Worldwide
It's been 10 years since Australian actress Margot Robbie stepped into the American consciousness with her breakout role in Martin Scorsese's "The Wolf of Wall Street," and now she's the star of the highest-grossing movie of the year — not just at the domestic box office, but across the entire world. Variety reports that "Barbie" has now grossed $1.36 billion globally, zooming past established champion "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which topped out at $1.35 billion. Our lady in pink already overtook "Mario" in North American theaters last week, and "Barbie" is also the highest-grossing movie that Warner Bros. Pictures has ever released.
Just because she's won the race, doesn't mean "Barbie" is hitting the brakes. The film held the No. 1 spot at the box office for four consecutive weekends, and in its seventh weekend is set to stay comfortably in second place, with new release "The Equalizer 3" winning the weekend. According to The Hollywood Reporter, "Barbie" is expected to add another $13 million to her domestic total over the Labor Day weekend, including Monday.
"Barbie" is a box office bombshell that few could have predicted. Long-range forecasts from Box Office Pro in June predicted that it would finish its theatrical run with somewhere between $120 million and $226 million at the domestic box office. This weekend will see the movie cross $600 million domestically, alongside $760 million at the international box office.
What's the secret to Barbie's success?
This kind of box office performance will undoubtedly have studios salivating and searching for ways to replicate it (there's already a Mattel Cinematic Universe in the works). But "Barbie" is such a lightning-in-a-bottle recipe that trying to reverse-engineer its specific path to success would be a fool's errand.
Obviously it helps that the movie is based around the most popular doll in the world. Then there's the solid star power from Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling, and the charisma that they brought to the movie's promotional tour. A lot of credit is owed to director Greta Gerwig and her co-writer, Noah Baumbach. This could very easily have been a boring, generic, cookie-cutter toy movie, but they managed to deliver a take on Barbie that was irreverent (there are jokes about the male-dominated leadership of Mattel and Barbie creator Ruth Handler's legal troubles with the SEC) and acknowledged popular criticisms of the doll, while still ultimately delivering a feel-good, pro-Barbie message. The trailers promised broad appeal: "If you love Barbie, this movie is for you. If you hate Barbie, this movie is for you." Critics and audiences concurred, and the movie got a double boost from positive reviews and strong word-of-mouth.
Then, of course, there's the grass roots phenomenon known as "Barbenheimer," which emerged from people noticing that "Barbie" and "Oppenheimer" were set to release on the same date, and being amused enough by the showdown to start cooking up Barbenheimer fan art before the films had even released. Behind the scenes, there are rumors that Warner Bros. actually scheduled "Barbie" on the same day as "Oppenheimer" out of spite, since director Christopher Nolan had ended their longstanding relationship to go and work with Universal Pictures. According to sources who spoke to Insider, Nolan was pretty upset about the conflict. But if it was an attempt at sabotage, it backfired magnificently, giving "Oppenheimer" a major boost at the box office as well.