Barbie Is on the Verge of Hitting $1 Billion at the Box Office

Barbie is one of the biggest box office success stories in years, and it continues cementing its legacy as it approaches its third week in theaters. Over the weekend, Barbie showed incredible resilience, nearly passing $100 million for the second weekend in a row. Greta Gerwig's blockbuster took in $93 million domestically, helping take its global total to nearly $775 million in less than two weeks on the big screen. It won't be long before Barbie reaches the coveted $1 billion mark.

So far in 2023, only one other movie has crossed the billion-dollar threshold, and that was The Super Mario Bros. Movie that Illumination and Universal released earlier in the year. According to The Hollywood Reporter, Barbie should pass the mark by the time Barbie wraps up its third weekend at the box office. 

Barbie's success is unparalleled, especially considering it opened alongside Christopher Nolan's Oppenheimer, which is setting box office records of its own. This week, the film will pass the Patty Jenkins-directed Wonder Woman, which earned $822 million back in 2017. That will make Barbie the highest grossing film ever solely directed by a woman and there's a chance it ends up as the highest earning film in all of 2023.

To-date, only 52 movies in the history of entertainment have earned more than $1 billion at the global box office. Barbie's inclusion in that club is a matter of when, not if, and it will become billion-dollar movie number 53.

Barbie Sequel Possibilities

With this kind of success, there is obviously a lot of conversation about a potential Barbie sequel. Mattel and Warner Bros. will want to go all-in on Barbie after this theatrical showing and Ynon Kreiz, Mattel's CEO, has talked about building out a universe based on the brand.

"Barbie, as a brand, has many different iterations. The product lines of Barbie is a very broad brand. In addition to the main Barbie figure, she has family, she has a lot of elements around in her universe," Kreiz told Variety. "It's a very rich universe… It's a very broad and very elastic brand, in terms of opportunities."

"At the outset, we're not saying, 'Okay, let's think already about movie two and three.' Let's get the first one right and make that a success," he continued. "And if you do that, opportunities open up very quickly, once you establish the first movie as a successful representation of a franchise on the big screen."

Greta Gerwig and Barbie 2

While Mattel and Warner Bros. may be high on a second Barbie movie, director and co-writer Greta Gerwig doesn't have any ideas or plans for a follow-up.

"At this moment, it's all I've got," Gerwig told The New York Times. "I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I'll never have another idea and everything I've ever wanted to do. I wouldn't want to squash anybody else's dreams but for me, at this moment, I'm at totally zero."

In Barbie, to live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you're a Ken. From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig comes Barbie, which hit theaters on July 21st. Barbie stars Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell. The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren. Gerwig directed Barbie from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel.