'Barbie' Earns $1Bn, Greta Gerwig Becomes First Women Director To Enter Hollywood's Billionaire Club

Greta Gerwig's 'Barbie' has surpassed the US$1 billion mark, shattering a record for female directors previously held by Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman.

Barbie earns $1 billion dollars at the box office.

Source : IMDb

New Delhi: Since its release more than two weeks ago, Barbie has surpassed the US$1 billion mark, shattering a record for female directors previously held by Patty Jenkins' Wonder Woman.

On Sunday, Warner Bros. Pictures revealed that the film earned a total of $1.0315 billion (A$1.56 billion, £800 million) during the weekend, including $459 million from North American theatres and another $572.1 million from other markets. The number was verified by the media analytics company Comscore.

Barbie surpassed $1 billion in worldwide box office receipts, setting a record for female directors. Greta Gerwig replaced Patty Jenkins, the director of Wonder Woman, as the biggest female filmmaker in a single picture with Barbie.

Although Barbie isn't a female director's first box office hit. Wonder Woman, starring Gal Gadot and directed by Patty Jenkins, earned a respectable $823 million worldwide. The astounding $1.1 billion box office haul for Anna Boden and Ryan Fleck's Captain Marvel was astounding. With Catherine Hardwicke in charge, the "Twilight" franchise made $408 million. But even Warner Bros. was giving Gerwig's pink-tinted vision the side-eye before Barbie made an appearance, raising concerns about a film that violated preconceived notions.

Only 53 films have earned more than $1 billion at the box office in modern times, even after adjusting for inflation, and Barbie has surpassed Wonder Woman's $821.8 million worldwide gross to become the most successful film directed by a woman. Frozen ($1.3 billion), Frozen 2 ($1.45 billion), both co-directed by Jennifer Lee, and Captain Marvel ($1.1 billion), co-directed by Anna Boden, are the three films that have made more money than Barbie.

Barbie now holds the record for the most domestically successful live-action films directed by women in North America, surpassing Captain Marvel with $459.4 million (as opposed to $426.8 million).

Even though Greta deserves all the credit for her cinematic vision, we should also be happy that the women stole the show, demonstrating that when you give women the power, they can break barriers like glass ceilings and box office records.