It looks like Barbie has over-performed yet again, continuing its run as one of the biggest box office success stories in quite some time. After smashing records in its opening weekend, Barbie won the box office for a second time this past weekend. Initial reports, based on the Sunday estimates, indicated that Barbie had earned $93 million at the domestic box office in weekend number two, in addition to $122 million internationally. Well, once all of Sunday’s ticket sales were counted, Barbie‘s international total was even higher than that.
According to Deadline, Barbie actually earned $127 million at the international box office this weekend, coming in $5 million higher than initially reported. That puts Barbie’s total after Sunday at a whopping $780 million. It shouldn’t take much longer for Greta Gerwig’s blockbuster to reach $1 billion.
Barbie is just days away from passing Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 to become the second-biggest movie of 2023.
Barbie Sequel Possibilities
With this kind of success, there is obviously a lot of conversation about a potential Barbie sequel. Mattel and Warner Bros. will want to go all-in on Barbie after this theatrical showing and Ynon Kreiz, Mattel’s CEO, has talked about building out a universe based on the brand.
“Barbie, as a brand, has many different iterations. The product lines of Barbie is a very broad brand. In addition to the main Barbie figure, she has family, she has a lot of elements around in her universe,” Kreiz told Variety. “It’s a very rich universe… It’s a very broad and very elastic brand, in terms of opportunities.”
“At the outset, we’re not saying, ‘Okay, let’s think already about movie two and three.’ Let’s get the first one right and make that a success,” he continued. “And if you do that, opportunities open up very quickly, once you establish the first movie as a successful representation of a franchise on the big screen.”
Greta Gerwig and Barbie 2
While Mattel and Warner Bros. may be high on a second Barbie movie, director and co-writer Greta Gerwig doesn’t have any ideas or plans for a follow-up.
“At this moment, it’s all I’ve got,” Gerwig told The New York Times. “I feel like that at the end of every movie, like I’ll never have another idea and everything I’ve ever wanted to do. I wouldn’t want to squash anybody else’s dreams but for me, at this moment, I’m at totally zero.”
In Barbie, to live in Barbie Land is to be a perfect being in a perfect place. Unless you have a full-on existential crisis. Or you’re a Ken. From Oscar-nominated writer/director Greta Gerwig comes Barbie, which hit theaters on July 21st. Barbie stars Oscar-nominees Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as Barbie and Ken, alongside America Ferrera, Kate McKinnon, Michael Cera, Ariana Greenblatt, Issa Rae, Rhea Perlman, and Will Ferrell. The film also stars Ana Cruz Kayne, Emma Mackey, Hari Nef, Alexandra Shipp, Kingsley Ben-Adir, Simu Liu, Ncuti Gatwa, Scott Evans, Jamie Demetriou, Connor Swindells, Sharon Rooney, Nicola Coughlan, Ritu Arya, Grammy Award-winning singer/songwriter Dua Lipa and Oscar-winner Helen Mirren. Gerwig directed Barbie from a screenplay by Gerwig & Oscar nominee Noah Baumbach, based on Barbie by Mattel.