Greta Gerwig’s Barbie has broken a historic record by surpassing $1 billion in global box office ticket sales – also rendering Gerwig as the first woman to reach this milestone as a solo director.
This record, described as “Barbillion” by Warner Bros., was previously held by Patty Jenkins, director of Wonder Woman, which took $821.8 million globally in 2017. Now Barbie, starring Margot Robbie, America Ferrera, and Ryan Gosling, is the first film directed by a solo woman to hit a billion dollars. (Other movies that have been co-directed by women have also done so: Frozen, Frozen 2, and )
Barbie is only the second 2023 film to hit the big B, with The Super Mario Bros. Movie bringing in $1.357 billion in ticket sales.
“As distribution chiefs, we’re not often rendered speechless by a film’s performance, but Barbillion has blown even our most optimistic predictions out of the water,” Warner Bros. distribution executives Jeff Goldstein and Andrew Cripps said .
Goldstein that “no-one but Greta Gerwig could have brought this cross-generational icon and her world to life in such a funny, emotional and entertaining story.”
It doesn’t seem like a surprise though, really, given the , , and the fact that Gerwig and the film literally . Gerwig already broke the record for of all time for a female director.
