Investing.com -- "Barbie" has raked in over $1 billion in ticket sales worldwide just 17 days after its debut, according to a unit of distributor Warner Bros. Discovery (NASDAQ:WBD).
In a statement on Sunday, the studio said Greta Gerwig's pink-splashed fantasy-comedy took home $459.4 million in North America and $572.1M overseas. The figures were later confirmed by media analytics group Comscore.
It makes Gerwig the first-ever woman to solo-direct a billion-dollar picture.
Warner Bros. executives Jeff Goldstein and Andrew Cripps said they were "rendered speechless" by the success of the film, which stars Margot Robbie and Ryan Gosling as the titular doll and her frustrated counterpart Ken. Goldstein and Cripps noted that the returns have "blown even our most optimistic predictions out of the water."
"Barbie," which was aided by a massive marketing campaign and an internet phenomenon that paired it with Christopher Nolan's biopic "Oppenheimer," is now the sixth movie to surpass the billion-dollar box office mark since the pandemic. It is also the second-highest-grossing film of the year so far, trailing behind Universal and Illumnation's "The Super Mario Bros. Movie."
Shares in Warner Bros. Discovery edged higher in premarket U.S. trading on Monday, while Mattel (NASDAQ:MAT) -- the toy maker behind Barbie -- also inched up into the green.