Barbie Of Records: 1 Billion at the International Box Office

It even did well in China, where the toy is not popular among girls.

Did Barbie save the cinema from a destiny of streamed content? It appears so. According to official Warner Bros. estimates, the blockbuster with Margot Robbie as the title protagonist and executive producer has raked in $1.03 billion at the global box office three weeks into its run. This makes writer-director Greta Gerwig the first female director with a billion-dollar movie.

According to Paul Dergarabedian, senior media analyst at Comscore, only about 50 films in history, unadjusted for inflation, have hit the billion-dollar mark.

In an interview with Collider before the strike, Margot Robbie shared a premonition she had at a greenlight meeting with studios. “I think I told them they’d make a billion dollars which, maybe, I was overselling, but we had a movie to make,” she said. She wasn’t overselling at all. Box office sales in the world’s most prominent movie markets, including the United Kingdom, Mexico, and Australia, determined its global success. The movie has been the No. 1 release in these markets every weekend since its release.

“Barbie” also performed well in China, although the Chinese population of the last fifty years didn’t grow up with the famous toy. “The film embraces what generations of women have both loved and hated about the brand and what it’s often represented in the past,” said BoxOffice Pro chief analyst Shawn Robbins explaining its success and adding that the movie “has tapped into cultural conversations about gender roles and female empowerment, topics valid in every corner of the world.”

Source: Cbsnews.com