‘Barbie’ Becomes $1 Billion Girl While ‘Meg 2’ Devours Overseas Box Office

Barbie still maintained the number one spot over the weekend after actuals were released and the film hit a huge milestone in the process. In other box office news, Meg 2: The Trench debuted strong domestically but its real success is coming from overseas markets, particularly in China.

Per Deadline, Barbie grossed $53 million in its third weekend, representing a 43 percent drop from the previous weekend. The big story here is that Barbie is now a part of the $1 billion global club and our girl did it in only 17 days of release. This makes Greta Gerwig the first solo female director to have a film gross $1 billion at the worldwide box office. Warner Bros. itself also broke a significant record as Barbie is the first film in its 100-year history to sell this many tickets so rapidly, according to Warner Bros. president of domestic distribution Jeff Goldstein.

The domestic total for Barbie now stands at $459.3 million and the film is likely to spend another weekend at number one because competition is slim this weekend with The Last Voyage of the Demeter being the only new wide release debuting. It’s a Barbie world and we’re all proudly just living in it.

Meg 2: The Trench opened to $30 million to claim second place and while that is down from the $45.4 million opening of its 2018 predecessor, it is above the $25 million the film was tracking ahead of the weekend. The real success story for Meg 2, and likely why we got a sequel, is that its overseas start was pretty spectacular. The film opened to $112 million from 75 overseas markets with $53.3 million of that coming from China alone. That brings us to a $142 million global start which means The Meg 3 might just be in the plans for Warner Bros., which can boast that they claimed the number one and number two spot this weekend with Barbie and their shark sequel.

Dropping to third is Oppenheimer with a gross of $29.1 million, down just 37.6 percent from the previous weekend. Oppenheimer is playing like a summer blockbuster rather than a historical epic and that is a testament to Christopher Nolan’s weight at the box office and partly because of the “Barbenheimer” craze which likely fueled ticket sales as well. The film’s domestic total stands at $228.8 million while its global take, after grossing an additional $52.8 million from 46 overseas markets, has it a staggering $553 million. This makes Oppenheimer Nolan’s fifth biggest film of all time, surpassing Dunkirk.

Debuting impressively in fourth place is Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem which grossed $28 million over the 3-day weekend and $43 million since its Wednesday launch. This is right in line where tracking had the film and this is just the right start for a film that cost $70 million to make. Word of mouth should play well through the end of the summer given the film’s “A” CinemaScore and stellar critical reviews. A sequel and TV series have already been greenlit so more Ninja Turtles action is definitely on the way.

Rounding out the top five is Haunted Mansion which collapsed in its second weekend to $9.2 million. That’s a massive drop of 61.7 percent and bad news for Disney given the film’s reported budget of $150-160 million. International grosses aren’t helping all that much with the film just taking in $59.6 million globally so far so Disney is going to lose big time on this one.

Check back next week for our next box office breakdown!