Barbie Passes The Batman, Is Now Warner Bros.’ Highest-Grossing Movie of the 2020s

After a blockbuster second weekend at the box office, Barbie has earned a huge $774 million globally, earning it a spot in the top 20 highest-grossing movies ever from its studio, Warner Bros. That puts it in rarefied air, with only three big franchises — the Wizarding World of Harry Potter, DC, and J.R.R. Tokien’s Middle Earth — taking up spots above it on the charts. It is also now the highest-grossing movie Warners has put out since 2019’s Joker, beating out The Batman (which earned $766,039,263 during its global theatrical run) on Sunday.

That makes it, at least for the time being, Warner’s biggest hit of the 2020s. That increases the odds that the studio will be desperate for a sequel — or at least to continue working with Mattel, which has a huge slate of projects in the works. 

Barbie and Oppenheimer held steady at the top of the box office, each making about half of what it did the week before, with Barbie bringing home an estimated $93 million and Oppenheimer drawing $46 million. That’s in spite of competition from Disney’s Haunted Mansion, which took home around $30 million amid lukewarm reviews. The LaKeith Stanfield/Tiffany Haddish comedy based on the beloved Disney ride fared much better with audiences than critics, scoring 86% positive on Rotten Tomatoes (as opposed to 42% from critics) as of this writing. 

Barbie is projected to easily pass the $1 billion mark at the global box office before its theatrical run wraps up, with a domestic/foreign split that roughly mirrors the only other movie to do so this year, The Super Mario Bros. Movie. It’s likely a sign of the increasing importance of the international market that Barbie passed The Batman at the worldwide box office, but still has to make another $19 million to catch up to it domestically. If you take last week’s numbers, and its roughly 50% drop week-over-week into account, that will probably come on Wednesday or so.

Barbie‘s success is important for Warner Bros., who recently lost a fortune on The Flash and who are facing down the possibility of another financial loss with Blue Beetle, which is tracking for a pretty small opening weekend in spite of fan excitement among DC and Cobra Kai fans. It’s also important because with DC scaling back its number of releases, the Tolkien estate taking Middle Earth elsewhere, and the last few Fantastic Beasts movies disappointing, Warner Bros.’ most successful franchises are all in distress at the moment. When you look past DC, Potter, and Tolkien, the next batch of movies on Warner’s “highest-grossing” chart come from sources where sequels are unlikely: It, The Matrix, and Oppenheimer filmmaker Christopher Nolan, who famously took his ball and went home (to Universal) after he was unhappy that Warners gave their 2021 release slate same-day digital releases on HBO Max.

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.