‘Barbie’ Smashes Box Office Record with Biggest Opening Weekend Ever for Female Director

“Barbie” had a dream debut at the box office, raking in $155 million this weekend for the biggest opening of the year, and the biggest opening for any film directed by a woman, according to estimates released Sunday.

Director Greta Gerwig’s live-action film is based on Mattel’s iconic doll, which was introduced in 1959 and has seen many iterations in the decades since. The film stars Margot Robbie as Barbie and Ryan Gosling as Ken, the male doll that Mattel rolled out in 1961 as Barbie’s companion. Gerwig is from California, born in Sacramento.

The two largest openings for female-directed films had been 2019’s “Captain Marvel,” which was co-directed by Anna Boden and made $153 million in its first weekend, and 2017’s “Wonder Woman,” directed by Patty Jenkins, which opened to $103 million in North America.

Also enjoying a big opening weekend was “Oppenheimer,” director Christopher Nolan’s biopic of J. Robert Oppenheimer, who led America’s development of the atomic bomb during World War II. Nolan’s film opened to $80.5 million, Comscore reported.

Enthusiasm for the two wildly different films, which sparked the “Barbenheimer” meme concerning people who planned to watch both movies on the same day, led to the largest overall weekend box office gross in North America since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, and the fourth largest ever, at $302 million.

Third place went to another remarkable success story, as the faith-based drama “Sound of Freedom” took in $20 million Friday through Sunday in its third week of release, and has now grossed over $120 million domestically.

“Mission: Impossible — Dead Reckoning Part One” was fourth with $19.5 million, one week after opening in first place.

“Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny” was fifth with $6.7 million in its fourth week.

Rounding out the top 10 domestic releases, as estimated by Comscore, were “Insidious: The Red Door” ($6.5 million), “Elemental” ($5.8 million), “Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse” ($2.8 million), “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts” ($1.1 million) and “No Hard Feelings” ($1 million).

The year-to-date domestic total is $5.392 billion — an increase of 16% over the figure at this time last year, according to Comscore.

City News Service contributed to this article.