Do you think they will make a commemorative Billionaire Barbie doll? Think of the accessory opportunities.
After years of stops and starts, and numerous scripts and different creative teams, the Barbie movie is officially a mega-blockbuster. Over the weekend, the film crossed $1 billion at the worldwide box office. That makes Greta Gerwig the first female director to helm a $1 billion movie solo. (Three previous movies that crossed $1 billion were co-directed by women: Frozen and Frozen 2 by Jennifer Lee, and Captain Marcel by Anna Boden.)
Barbie was #1 at the box office last weekend for the third straight week. It earned another $53 million in the U.S., bringing its domestic total to $459 million and counting. That makes it the the second-biggest movie in the country for 2023 behind only The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which grossed $574 million in theaters back in the spring. Barbie has earned another $572 million overseas, bringing its worldwide total to $1.031 billion so far. That’s also the second-highest total of 2023, once again behind just The Super Mario Bros. Movie (with $1.352 billion).
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So what’s next? A Barbie sequel seems all but inevitable at this point, although it will have to wait until the conclusion of the Hollywood strikes before work can even begin on a screenplay. Whether Gerwig, Margot Robbie, or Ryan Gosling would want to make a sequel remains to be seen.
While a brand name as strong as Barbie would seem to be a guaranteed hit, Gerwig’s film was certainly not a cookie cutter story about a beautiful woman named Barbie, or a doll that magically comes to life. Instead, she used the iconography of Barbie to make a movie that celebrated the dolls’ history while also satirizing some of its stranger moments (and the behavior of men in general). That was a risk — but clearly it paid off.
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