Barbie absolutely slays at the domestic box office
Greta Gerwig’s live-action PG-13 comedy Barbie is killing it at the box office in just a day. July 21 was its opening day, and it’s already beaten out the previous box office number 1.
According to Box Office Mojo, domestically, the film has already surpassed $70.5 million, beating out Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse by a wide margin. Spider-Verse took home $51.8 million on its opening day back in June. Bear in mind, this is just opening day and we’re not even chalking up potential international sales, which is often what filmmakers make the bulk of their profit from.
If Barbie keeps on track, it’s likely to even surpass this year’s biggest hit so far, The Super Mario Bros. Movie. In a matter of three days, Nintendo and Illumination’s collab film made waves at the box office, accruing $146 million. Now, it’s just as likely the film will taper off, but considering the monolith that the toy itself is, it’s hard to really imagine the film will have a strong opening day and not end up with a slow trickle rather than a full-on stop, especially when that much was made in a single day.
Barbie is the latest film starring Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the namesake protagonist and Ken, respectively. It also has actors like Michael Cera, America Ferrera, Will Ferrell, and more supporting the film. It’s spent a while trapped in Production Hell as far back as 2009 when Mattel inked a deal with Universal Pictures and then Sony Pictures and then Warner Bros. Pictures.
It wasn’t until 2018 when things started looking up for the woman-led film, as Warner Bros. seemed to actually want to release the film. Barbie marks the first in a laundry list of films in the Mattel pipeline, including an untitled Barney flick, a Hot Wheels film, a Rock ‘Em Sock ‘Em Robots movie, and a lot more, none of which have release windows.
