Barbie‘s historic opening weekend at the box office proves we’re all living in Barbieland.
The film, which opened on Friday, July 21, raked in an estimated $155 million at the domestic box office on opening weekend. That’s far beyond the Margot Robbie-led movie’s projections, which were between $90 million and $110 million. Barbie nearly doubled the opening weekend box office of Oppenheimer.
Christopher Nolan’s three-hour drama about the atomic bomb brought in an estimated $80 million. The period film, starring Cillian Murphy, Emily Blunt, Robert Downey Jr. and Matt Damon, also surpassed expectations and was even part of a double-feature for many. AMC reported last week that more than 20,000 moviegoers pre-ordered same-day tickets to see both Barbie and Oppenheimer — a phenomenon nicknamed Barbenheimer.
As Barbie raked in the big bucks, she also broke some big records. The Greta Gerwig-directed film marks the biggest box office opening ever for a movie directed by a woman. She dethroned Patty Jenkins, who previously held the solo crown after Wonder Woman debuted to $103.3 million. Meanwhile, Anna Boden held the title for co-directing after 2019’s Captain Marvel, which she helmed with Ryan Fleck, opened to $153 million.
Barbie is officially the biggest opening weekend of the year, knocking The Super Mario Bros. Movie out of the top spot. The Mattel movie also had a bigger weekend than all of this year’s Marvel movies, including Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 and Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania. (Sony’s Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse is the top superhero opening of 2023 with $120 million.)
The movie — which follows Barbie into the real world as she struggles to figure out who is playing with her and giving her thoughts of existential dread — is also the biggest three-day opening for a movie based on a toy, surpassing all Transformers movies.
Though they are no strangers to huge studio films, Barbie marks the biggest opening weekend ever for both Robbie, 33, and Ryan Gosling, who play Barbie and Ken. (Barbie also stars America Ferrara, Simu Liu, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Will Ferrell and Kate McKinnon.)
In addition to the $155 million at the domestic box office, Barbie is expected to pull in another $182 million internationally. Still, the movie has a ways to go at the box office to live up to Robbie’s big promises.
“I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make, OK?” Robbie told Collider of convincing Mattel and Warner Bros. to both approve the script and give her and Gerwig creative control over the film. In addition to starring as the doll, her company, Lucky Chap Entertainment, produced the film and Robbie is an executive producer while Gerwig directed the film from a script she penned with husband and creative partner Noah Baumbach.
“Studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” the Australian actress continued in the interview, which was conducted ahead of the SAG-AFTRA strike. “And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘Dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg‘ – pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.”
