The Greta Gerwig-directed Barbie movie has taken another record, now passing Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight as Warner Bros Discovery’s top-performing movie in North America. While there’s an argument that using the non-inflation-adjusted figures doesn’t quite place the movies on an equal footing, it’s still a momentous record to see. Brandon Blake, top entertainment law firms los angeles at Blake & Wang P.A, dives deeper into the figures for us.
Record Domestic Takings
Barbie now holds a domestic box office total of $537.4M, having passed the $1.2B mark (and then some) globally despite a poor performance in South Korea. The Dark Knight has $536M off of its 2008 run. This positions Barbie as the new second place release for Warner Bros, passed only by the global gross of $1.34B for the final installment in the Harry Potter franchise. And there’s a decent chance that the famous boy wizard’s record may yet fall, too. Not that the nes is all bad for the Nolan camp, either- Oppenheimer has also continued its steady climb to come in as his 5th best earning title at the global box office to date, currently sitting north of $650M.
Record-Breaking by Barbie
This new record joins one for Greta Gerwig, now the highest-grossing female director of all time at the domestic box office and the live-action worldwide box office. Together, unlikely a pair as they may be, Oppenheimer and Barbie are being widely credited as re-igniting a wider interest in cinematic attendance and contributing to the resurrection of the summer box office’s hopes from the ashes of a dull June.
While one can certainly argue that The Dark Knight has not yet fallen to the pink-tinged Barbie machine, as we can hardly ignore the effects of inflation over a 15 year gap, it’s still another impressive ribbon to add to Mattel’s iconic blonde bombshell’s many accolades to date. Let’s hope we see some more unexpected box office stars to round out the year, too.
Film and Television 