Since Barbie debuted in theaters on July 21, it has raked in the big bucks. The PG-13 comedy debuted to a whopping $162 million on opening weekend and surpassed the billion-dollar threshold on August 6. The film continues to dominate the domestic box office every weekend, and, as of Tuesday, August 15, the movie has accumulated $1.187 billion worldwideShortly before the film opened, Robbie recalled pitching Gerwig’s Barbie to studio executives at Warner Bros. She believed she was overselling the film — which follows Barbie through an existential crisis that leads her and Ken to the real world — when she claimed it would rake in at least 10 figures at the
worldwide box officeI think my pitch in the green-light meeting was, the studios have prospered so much when they’re brave enough to pair a big idea with a visionary director,” she recalled in a pre-SAG-AFTRA strike interview with Collider in July. “And then I gave a series of examples like, ‘dinosaurs and [Steven] Spielberg,’ that and that, that and that – pretty much naming anything that’s been incredible and made a ton of money for the studios over the years. And I was like, ‘And now you’ve got Barbie and Greta Gerwig.’”
She concluded, “I think I told them that it’d make a billion dollars, which maybe I was overselling, but we had a movie to make.”The feat makes Gerwig, 40, the only solo female director to join the billion-dollar director club with a live-action movie. (Captain Marvel‘s Anna Boden, who co-directed the Brie Larson-led superhero film with Ryan Fleck, is the only other woman to helm any of the 53 movies to surpass $1 billion).
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