Cinema is well and truly back. Well, maybe not quite, but the success of films such as Barbie, Oppenheimer and Elemental certainly gives us hope that the film industry isn’t going down without a fight.
In fact, Barbie just broke a pretty neat record. The Mattel toy movie grossed the mythical $1bn line at the box office over the weekend and, with that, made history.
Writer-director Greta Gerwig is now the only solo female director to have a film gross $1bn at the global box office. It’s no small achievement; the only film to come even close to that was Patty Jenkins with the first Wonder Woman film. Barbie reached the milestone after just 17 days in cinemas, too!
Greta Gerwig on set of Barbie. Credit: Warner Bros
The only other film to cross that threshold with a female director was Captain Marvel, but Gerwig is the only solo filmmaker to join the billion dollar club.
Barbie’s success is a huge step forward in (hopefully) balancing the scales in Hollywood. Women helm less blockbusters and franchise films, but Gerwig has proved that women are capable of attracting the masses and enticing them to buy a ticket.
The last film to make $1bn at the box office this year was The Super Mario Bros. Movie which is currently the highest-grossing film of the year with $1.3bn box office takings. It’s looking more and more likely that Barbie will overtake that and become the highest-grossing film of the year.
We’d certainly love that. In our glowing 4-star review, we called Barbie a “masterpiece” and “delightfully weird”.
Barbie doesn’t have an official sequel in the works yet and Gerwig has already said she is unlikely to be involved in any Barbie sequels. That being said, Mattel does have a whopping 14 films in development currently, including a Polly Pocket film which will be helmed by Girls creator Lena Dunham.
Hopefully, Gerwig will be the first of many women who will helm $1bn films.
