The original Barbie doll was introduced to the world in 1959, making the ever-glamorous fashionista 64 years old.
The Barbie movie hasn’t been around nearly as long. It just feels that way.
For the fourth-straight weekend, Barbie claimed the box-office crown, earning a very healthy $33.7 million en route. The film has now taken in $526.3 million in North America, which narrows the gap between it and 2023’s top film, The Super Mario Bros. Movie. (Mario and company earned $574.2 million this spring, which means that Barbie’s less than $48 million behind.)
It’s been doing just fine internationally, too. Add in its overseas grosses, and Barbie’s worldwide total is nearly $1.2 billion. That makes it almost as big of a moneymaker as the doll that inspired it. (According to Fox Business, Mattel’s Barbie brand banked $1.49 billion in 2022.)
The second half of the Barbenheimer phenomenon continues to do just fine in its own right. Oppenheimer returned to second place this weekend with $18.8 million stateside, pushing its domestic grosses to $264.3 million. That makes it the year’s seventh highest-grossing flick—pretty impressive, considering it’s never been No. 1 on any given weekend. Add in its worldwide sales, and the historical biopic pegs in at $649 million—making it the fifth-biggest moneymaker in director Christopher Nolan’s career. (The four biggest? The Dark Knight Rises, The Dark Knight, Inception and Interstellar.)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem escaped the weekend fray in third place, collecting $15.8 million domestically. Meg 2: The Trench nibbled $12.7 million in box-office receipts, swimming into fourth.
Of course, none of those holdovers had much competition. The sole wide-release film this weekend was The Last Voyage of the Demeter, a waterlogged revamping of the Dracula legend. It earned just $6.5 million this weekend—far less than the $8-9 million most expected it would—and squeaked into the Top 5 by the breadth of a fang. Universal Pictures seemed to hope to launch a new franchise with Demeter. If so, the film’s performance might have put a stake through those ambitions.
The only other new release, Jules, finished a distant 11th with $834,000.
One final box-office performance note. Sound of Freedom continues to overperform mightily. Though it slipped to No. 8 this weekend, taking in another $4.8 million, the film about human trafficking has now earned a staggering $172.8 million domestically. And that figure places it ahead of stumbling summer heavyweights such as Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny ($172.6 million) and Mission Impossible: Dead Reckoning Part One ($159.6 million).
2 Responses
-I genuinely don’t know if this week’s winner will be Barbie or Blue Beetle (I thought the latter’s trailer looked like an unending list of cliches from start to finish, but I’m hearing good things about the actual movie), but Oppenheimer is well on its way to topping the children’s movie “Sing” as the top-grossing film — in the domestic U.S. box office — to never hit #1 on a given weekend. It will likely reach the top of that list this weekend. https://www.boxofficemojo.com/chart/never_in_top/?by_rank_threshold=1 Apparently “Interstellar” had a similar outcome, performing well but never hitting #1, thanks to the lovely but woefully underutilized “Big Hero 6.”
-I highly recommend Jonathan Cahns revealing the meaning behind Barbie, the icon and movie.