Surprise hit of the summer Barbie has made so much money it's surpassed The Dark Knight as Warner Bros' highest-grossing domestic box office film. Internationally, Barbie is also slated to make history as WB's highest-grossing film as it's set to surpass reigning champion Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows part 2.
via: Uproxx
The summer movie season has seen its share of flops and underperformers, but not all has been gloomy. Indeed, at the rate of money it’s Hoovering up, the season will belong to a movie that triggered he hell out of far right pundit Ben Shapiro. Barbie’s run isn’t even a month old and it’s still made a fortune, so much so that it’s already breaking a record once held by Batman.
As per Variety, as of Wednesday, Greta Gerwig’s follow-up to her prized adaptation of Little Women had made $537.5 million domestically. That makes it the biggest money-maker in the history of Warner Bros. (not adjusted for inflation). What film did it usurp? No less than The Dark Knight, Christopher Nolan’s beloved second Caped Crusader picture, which once held the honor with $536 million, made back in 2008.
And yes, that means Gerwig has surpassed her fellow “Barbenheimer” filmmaker Chris Nolan.
For the record, if one does adjust for inflation, it’s a very different story. The Dark Knight‘s $536 million from 2008 translates to a staggering $761 million today. So Barbie still has a ways to go if you compute it like that.
Mind you, Barbie isn’t yet the highest grossing film of summer 2023. That title still goes to The Super Mario Bros. Movie, whose domestic earnings stand at $574.2 million and global at $1.3 billion. Barbie’s international take is currently $1.19 billion, but given that it’s still gobbling up cash, it’s likely that it will soar past that total imminently.
Barbie's success shows that audiences are hungry for something they haven't seen before, and wanted to be part of a viral moment (which Barbie definitely was). Hopefully Barbie's success will show studios that audiences want original IPs (instead of the usual superhero fare, remakes and sequels), but I hae a feeling that they'll see this is audiences want to see 10 more movies similar to Barbie.