TV & Movies

Barbie lands biggest box office debut of 2023

A still from the Barbie movie.Warner Bros.

Barbie broke box office records over the weekend as it cruised to a $155 million American haul, and more than double that worldwide.

Anticipation has been high for Barbie over the last few months, and the reviews were mostly positive, with Greta Gerwig’s film earning a Rotten Tomatoes score of 90%.

As we state in our 5-Star review of the movie, “Barbie is an enigma of a movie. It is a children’s film made for adults, done in a thoughtful and loving way. It’s comforting, but never pandering. Like finding one of your old dolls in a drawer at your parent’s house, Barbie manages to take a stereotypical object we’re all familiar with, and make it personally existential.”

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That critical success has now translated into a box office bonanza, with Barbie a bona fide blockbuster.

Barbie breaks box office records

As of writing, Barbie has earned over $1 Billion at the Worldwide Box Office.

Barbie is now the biggest ever female solo directed film, overtaking 2017’s Wonder Woman. Greta Gerwig is now the first woman to independently helm a billion dollar movie.

In an interview with Collider, Robbie admitted to a promising this result to Hollywood in order to get the movie greenlit: “And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg,’ that and that, that and that — pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.’ And 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?!”

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Barbie opened to $155 million in its first weekend, meaning it has overtaken the Super Mario Bros. for biggest debut of the year. The two films are now the only movies to make $1 Billion this year.

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Buoyed by the ‘Barbenheimer’ phenomenon, analyst David A. Gross told Variety: “This is an unequivocally great weekend for moviegoing. Barbie and Oppenheimer are complementing each other at the box office, not taking audience from each other.”

“We have a pink unicorn here,” said Jeff Goldstein, the president of domestic distribution at Warner Bros. “We thought it would be $75 million for the opening weekend. Nobody saw $155 million coming. This doll has long legs.”

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Furthermore, Barbie opened well for preview screenings on Thursday, earning around $23.3 million, and has become the biggest preview night of the year, according to Deadline. In comparison, the latest Marvel Studios movie, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, earned $17.5 million on its preview night. 

There has been some stiff competition this year however. Fellow summer blockbuster Oppenheimer of course came out on the same day, Mission Impossible 7 has been doing well for itself, and Talk to Me, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, and The Meg 2 are all on the horizon.

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The Barbie movie is in cinemas worldwide now. Check out our other coverage below:

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