Box office: Barbie breaks a couple new records while the week's only new wide release flops

Also: Oppenheimer continues to outpace Inception, while Sound of Freedom passes Indiana Jones.

Another week, another milestone for Barbie to celebrate.

Barbie broke another couple of records this week, becoming the first movie directed by a woman to gross over $500 million in North America, and passing $1.18 billion to become the top-grossing live-action film by a female director worldwide.

The film, directed by Greta Gerwig from a script she wrote with Noah Baumbach, grossed an estimated $33.7 million in North America this weekend, raising its domestic total to $526.3 million. Barbie has earned another $657.6 million overseas, and the combined amounts were enough to propel the film past Anna Boden & Ryan Fleck’s Captain Marvel, which earned $1.13 billion worldwide in 2019.

Barbie still lags behind two female-directed animated films worldwide, namely Frozen, 2013, $1.28 billion and Frozen II, 2019, $1.45 billion, both of which were co-directed by Jennifer Lee. It could very easily pass the first Frozen within the next week or two.

Meanwhile, Barbie was reunited with Oppenheimer at the top of the North American chart this week. Oppenheimer—which was nudged to third place last week—reclaimed the runner-up spot with $18.8 million and a $264.2 million total so far.

Last week’s second-place film, Meg 2: The Trench, dropped to fourth with only $12.7 million—a drop of 57.7%, the biggest in the top ten—while Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Mutant Mayhem rose to third place with $15.8 million.

The only major new release, the horror film The Last Voyage of the Demeter, had one of the lowest openings of any wide release this year, with only $6.5 million.

More stats and facts on each of this week’s top ten can be found below.

First, a general point about “Barbenheimer” and the performance of those two films relative to the other blockbusters that have come out post-Covid.

• Barbie had the fourth-best first weekend, the very-best second weekend, and the fourth-best third weekend. Now it has the fourth-best fourth weekend.

  • This is the first time Barbie has fallen behind Top Gun: Maverick.

• Oppenheimer had the 17th-best first weekend, the 13th-best second weekend, and the 10th-best third weekend. Now it has the ninth-best fourth weekend.

  • So Oppenheimer continues to rise on the weekend-by-weekend charts—again, not because its grosses have gone up week-to-week, but because its grosses are going down more slowly than other films’ grosses.

And now, a few more stats re: this week’s top ten, title by title: