Barbie Is About To Cross $1 Billion At The Box Office (And Make History In The Process)
While some were skeptical of the film's long-term prospects, "Barbie" is still blowing everyone away at the box office, and the phenomenon is continuing in its third weekend of release. The Hollywood Reporter has the numbers showing that "Barbie" is on the verge of another fantastic weekend, set to rake in another $54 million domestically, which will help push it over the $1 billion mark globally either today or Sunday.
It's a big deal when any movie joins the Billion Dollar Club, but in the case of "Barbie," it's a particularly notable milestone. The film will be the first movie in history directed solely by a woman to do so.
The word "solely" is doing a little bit of work there, as some billion-dollar worldwide grossers — "Frozen" and "Frozen 2," co-directed by Jennifer Lee, and "Captain Marvel," co-directed by Anna Boden, to be specific — have had at least one woman director behind the camera. But Greta Gerwig will be the first woman to make it into that realm with a single directorial credit.
Barbie remains number one ahead of the new releases TMNT: Mutant Mayhem and Meg 2
"Barbie" has been in theaters for three weeks now and is still seemingly invincible to any new release challengers to its box office dominance.
It's a race for silver between the other side of the "Barbenheimer" coin, Christopher Nolan's own surprise box office smash, "Oppenheimer," as well as "Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem" and "Meg 2: The Trench," all of which are expected to gross somewhere in the $30 million neighborhood this weekend. That means we have to wait until tomorrow to know for sure how the box office standings will shake out, but there's no question of "Barbie" staying put in the top slot.
And as unlikely as it may seem, indie auteur Greta Gerwig will be the first solo woman director to ever make a billion-dollar global box office hit, something that few fans of the triple threat actor, writer. and director could have been able to foresee before she was hired to bring the "Barbie" movie to the screen.