Barbie Just Broke An Insane Record For Warner Bros., And The Dark Knight Is Involved

The summer of Barbie continues. After Warner Bros’ hot pink comedy has been dominating the domestic box office as the No. 1 movie for a consecutive four weeks, the movie just earned a new record for the studio. Barbie has now become the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros.’ storied history. We really do live in a Barbieland now, and, it’s dethroning The Dark Knight in the process.

In 2008, Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight was released in mid-July, just like Barbie, and broke a ton of box office records, including becoming the highest-grossing domestic release in Warner Bros. history, at the time surpassing the success of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone. Now, per Variety, Barbie has finally dethroned the superhero flick for the title as it passed $537.5 million in box office sales, bettering The Dark Knight’s $536 million North American total. 

This is huge news that further illustrates the gigantic hit Barbie has become in the matter of a month in theaters. That's especially when you consider no other Warner Bros. movie has been able to cross The Dark Knight’s numbers in the 15 years since its been released, of course until now. 

That’s not all though. Box office experts also expect Barbie to also continue to pass records and even take down The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has made $574 million in North America, making it the biggest movie in the 2023 movie release schedule to come out thus far. Barbie has made over $1.2 billion in its worldwide total and could reportedly even take down Universal’s animated video game movie’s $1.35 billion in global earnings if audiences continue to show up in droves to see Greta Gerwig’s vision of the iconic plastic doll. 

With Barbie getting its billion, it also has become the eighth Warner Bros. movie in the studio’s 100 years making movies to cross that threshold. It’s actually the fastest movie from Warner Bros to make that much money, after previously earning the biggest opening weekend of 2023 alongside Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer also making the big bucks and continuing to do so, with the movie returning to No. 2 last weekend and breaking records in its own right alongside Barbie across the summer months. 

With all these Barbie box office numbers in mind, we are most definitely witnessing movie history right now that we’ll certainly be talking about for years to come. Also, it's incredible this is in a world where female writer/directors like Greta Gerwig have never made these mountainous numbers for a studio before. Barbie has already surpassed the numbers of 2017’s Wonder Woman and 2019’s Captain Marvel, showing superhero blockbusters that there is room for well-known IPs like Barbie to turn into original blockbusters.