Barbie Passes The Dark Knight to Become Warner Bros. Highest Grossing Movie at Domestic Box Office

This Barbie just beat Batman at the box office. After crossing the $1 billion mark last week at the worldwide box office, Greta Gerwig's Barbie has surpassed Christopher Nolan's The Dark Knight to become Warner Bros.' highest-grossing domestic release in the studio's 100-year history. At $537.5 million stateside, Barbie added a reported $6.14 million to its haul on Tuesday to overtake the $536 million that Nolan's blockbuster Batman sequel earned domestically in 2008. With $1.2 billion globally, the Barbie box office is pacing to outdo the $1.34 billion of 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2, currently Warner Bros.' highest-grossing film ever.

Barbie will soon surpass Illumination and Nintendo's animated Super Mario Bros. Movie ($574 million) to become the biggest domestic release of 2023, and could top Mario's $1.35 billion as the highest-grossing film of the year at the global box office. As it stands, Barbie's $537.5 million makes it the No. 1 domestic release for Warner Bros., overtaking The Dark Knight ($536 million), 2012's The Dark Knight Rises ($448.1 million), 2001's Harry Potter and the Sorcerer's Stone ($317.8 million), 2011's Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – Part 2 ($381.1 million), knocking 1996's Twister ($241.6 million) out of the top 5. Barbie is also the studio's highest-grossing female-led film, beating 2017's Wonder Woman ($412.5 million domestic, $817.6 million worldwide), making Gerwig the highest-grossing female director of all time at the domestic box office.

"We have real ambition for the future of our motion picture business in the wake of the creative tour de force and global cultural phenomenon that is Barbie," Warner Bros. Discovery CEO David Zaslav said during a recent second-quarter earnings call. "While the studio's performance has been challenged in recent years — and they've clearly under-earned their potential — we are taking meaningful steps with respect to the creative direction of both Warner Bros. Pictures Group and DC. And a key facet of this strategy will be to lean into some of our great underutilized storytelling IP. It's been 10 years since we made a stand-alone Superman movie and 9 years since the last Lord of the Rings, for example." 

After a string of successes in the 2000s and 2010s included Nolan's Dark Knight trilogy and the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and Fantastic Beasts — and a recent string of flops and under-performers, including DC's Black Adam, Shazam! Fury of the Gods, and The Flash — Zaslav remarked that "the secret to Warner Bros. profitability was tentpole films."

"They'd make two to three of them together with a slate of new original content, and that was the winning formula. We too believe in the power of tentpoles, featuring great IP recognized by people everywhere in the world," Zaslav said, adding that recognizable brands — such as Mattel's Barbie — are the studio's "core strength, and we intend to get back to doing what we know works. While we've still got lots to do, we're very optimistic about the growth potential of this business."

Barbie is in theaters now and streaming on Max in September.