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.
(Via Variety)