Greta Gerwig should be feeling closer to fine these days — "Barbie" is now the highest grossing film of 2023 in North America.
Gerwig's comedy starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling has generated $575.4 million at the domestic box office, officially surpassing "The Super Mario Bros. Movie," which has collected $574 million domestically, according to Variety.
Internationally, "Barbie" has grossed $1.3 billion and is projected to pass "Mario" (with $1.35 billion globally) as the biggest worldwide release of 2023. Variety reported that these are the only two films that have passed the $1 billion mark this year so far, and neither of them are superhero movies or sequels in popular franchises.
"Barbie" began its record-breaking run in July and had the biggest debut of the year at $162 million, where it has remained the No. 1 movie for four weekends in a row, Variety reported.
The film became the highest-grossing domestic movie in Warner Bros. Discovery’s 100-year history, surpassing Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight,” which generated $536 million in 2008, according to CNBC.
In modern box office history, just 53 movies have made over $1 billion, not accounting for inflation, and "Barbie" is now the biggest to be directed by one woman, supplanting “Wonder Woman’s” $821.8 million global total.
Other competition that came earlier this month, specifically the weekend of Aug. 4, was the animated, PG-rated “Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem” and the Jason Statham shark sequel, “Meg 2: The Trench,” both of which were neck-in-neck with Christopher Nolan’s “Oppenheimer,” which was also in its third weekend, for the second-place spot.
“Meg 2” managed to sneak ahead and land in second place. It overcame its abysmal reviews to score a $30 million opening weekend from 3,503 locations. The Warner Bros. release, directed by Ben Wheatley, currently has a 29% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes and a B- CinemaScore from audiences. The thriller was released in 3D, which accounted for 22% of its first weekend business.
Third place went to “Oppenheimer,” which added $28.7 million from 3,612 locations in North America, bringing its domestic total to $228.6 million. In just three weeks, the J. Robert Oppenheimer biopic starring Cillian Murphy has become the highest grossing R-rated film of the year (ahead of “John Wick Chapter 4”) and the sixth-biggest of the year overall, surpassing “Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania.”
“Oppenheimer” also celebrated a landmark, crossing $500 million globally in three weeks. Its worldwide tally currently sits at nearly $720 million, according to Collider, which puts it ahead of “Dunkirk,” which clocked out with $527 million in 2017. It’s also the biggest World War II movie of all time.
“Barbie,” “Oppenheimer” and even the surprise, anti-trafficking hit “Sound of Freedom” have helped fuel a boom at the box office, bringing in many millions more than was expected and helping to offset pains caused by some summer disappointments.
“After ‘The Flash,’ ‘Indiana Jones’ and, to a certain extent, ‘Mission: Impossible,’ people were saying the summer was a disappointment. But it’s not over yet,” said Paul Dergarabedian, the senior media analyst for Comscore. “We’re going to have a summer that is going to go out on a high note.”
But the moment of triumph for the industry will likely be short lived if the studios can’t reach an agreement with striking actors and writers soon. The fall release calendar has already gotten slimmer, with some studios pushing films into 2024 instead of trying to promote them without movie stars.
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