‘Barbie’ Passes $800 Million at Worldwide Box Office

Just under 24 hours before Warner Bros. Discovery releases its latest quarterly earnings, they can at least boast that they have the summer’s biggest-grossing movie in North America.

With $381.7 million in 12 days, the Greta Gerwig blockbuster “Barbie” passed “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” on Wednesday to become the biggest summer earner in domestic grosses.

The Margot Robbie/Ryan Gosling film has also passed $800 million in worldwide earnings. By Wednesday night, it will pass “Wonder Woman” ($821 million) and soon pass “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” ($837 million) to become this summer’s biggest global earner and the year’s second-biggest title behind “The Super Mario Bros. Movie” ($1.35 billion). That milestone should arrive Wednesday or Thursday.

It marks the first time Warner Bros. has ruled the summer, domestically at least, since “Wonder Woman” in 2017. It’s also just past the unadjusted $381 million total of “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2.” It now ranks as Warner Bros.’ fourth-biggest earner. It’s behind, for now, only Gal Gadot’s superhero origin epic ($413 million) and Chris Nolan’s two “Dark Knight” sequels ($450 million in 2012 and $533 million in 2008). 

The $145 million Mattel flick earned $15.25 million on Tuesday, up 2% from its $15 million Monday take. Both set new records for the biggest second-Monday and second-Tuesday totals for any film that – think “Avatar,” “Aquaman” or “The Force Awakens” — didn’t open amid the year-end holiday season.  

This “Barbie” could end up becoming Warner Bros.’ biggest global earner ever

By the end of this weekend, “Barbie” should pass the $1 billion mark and the $1 billion totals of “The Dark Knight” and “The Dark Knight Rises.” After which, it’ll sit behind only “Aquaman” ($1.15 billion in 2018) and “Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2” ($1.345 billion in 2011) among WB’s top earners.

Time will tell if it can pass the final “Harry Potter” film to become — sans inflation — the Dream Factory’s biggest global earner. However, this overwhelming success speaks to three key points.  

Warner Bros. is more than “Harry Potter” and “Batman”

It wasn’t so long ago, 2018 in fact, that WB had a slew of theatrical smash hits in a variety of genres. After big hits like “Ready Player One,” “Rampage,” “Game Night,” “Crazy Rich Asians,” “The Meg” and “A Star Is Born,” “Aquaman” earning $1.15 billion was almost icing on the cake. If they can make hits like “Barbie,” or even periodic blow-out successes like “It” or “San Andreas,” then the entire ship won’t sink or swim based on James Gunn and Peter Safron’s DC Studios relaunch. 

The next “Top Gun: Maverick” was nothing like “Top Gun: Maverick'”

With all the chatter this year about whether “The Flash,” “Mission: Impossible – Dead Reckoning Part I” or “Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” would be “this year’s ‘Top Gun: Maverick,” that designation belonged to “Barbie.” “Barbie” is officially this summer’s zeitgeist-defining smash that vastly exceeded expectations while bringing scores of irregular moviegoers to the multiplex. Not only was “Barbie” a big-budget, action-lite, candy-colored film based on a popular “girl toy,” it was as different from “Top Gun: Maverick” as it was from “Oppenheimer.”

“The next Harry Potter” was “The Twilight Saga,” a romantic melodrama that couldn’t have been more different from the Harry Potter series. Moreover, the so-called “next Twilight” was “The Hunger Games,” a brutally violent, dystopian action melodrama that used its differences from the Bella/Edward romance as a marketing hook.  

Heck, after a decade’s worth of attempts to copy Marvel’s interconnected universe success, one of the few triumphs in that department was New Line’s R-rated “Conjuring” Universe films, which were mostly stand-alone religious horror movies.  

“Barbie” could be the first new-to-cinemas blockbuster franchise in over a decade

Meanwhile, presuming “Barbie” gets a theatrical sequel, it will be something we haven’t had since “The Hunger Games” in 2012, namely a new-to-cinema franchise that earns top-tier global box office. The last decade has mostly been dominated by ongoing franchises like “The Fast Saga,” the MCU and “Mission: Impossible” and revivals like “Star Wars,” “Jurassic World” and “Jumanji.” Sure, you had some “new” franchises like “John Wick” and “Now You See Me” that pulled their weight on smaller budgets, but the top-tier releases have mostly been ongoing or retrofitted IP. And while “Barbie” is based on a 65-year-old property, it’s doing as well as it is at least partially because it’s the “first” “Barbie” movie.  

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