Summary
- Barbie's box office success breaks a Warner Bros. movie trend dating back to 2008, as its first $1 billion non-franchise movie.
- Despite not being part of a live-action franchise, Barbie is now WB's second highest-grossing movie of all time, solidifying its position as a potential franchise.
- Given Warner Bros.' reliance on franchises, Barbie's box office success almost guarantees that it will become one, allowing WB to capitalize on its massive achievement.
Barbie's $1 billion box office success is obviously very good, but it's made even better thanks to how it breaks a Warner Bros. movie trend dating back to 2008. Barbie had a lot of hype leading up to its release thanks to an impressive marketing campaign and the "Barbenheimer" phenomenon due to it releasing the same day as Oppenheimer. Despite being a questionable move when it was very first announced, just prior to release there was no doubt Barbie would be a hit.
Even then, though, Barbie's $1 billion box office success has smashed both expectations and records. It crossed $1 billion in just its third weekend, is the second highest-grossing movie of 2023 (behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, which has made $1.358 billion), and is even WB's second highest-grossing movie of all time (behind Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2 with $1.342 billion). Even amid all of that, though, another record helps to make its box office more impressive, and will have a further impact on Barbie 2 being green lit.
Barbie Is WB's First $1 Billion Movie That's Not Part Of A Franchise (Yet)
As it stands, a total of eight Warner Bros. movies have made over $1 billion at the box office (unadjusted for inflation), starting with The Dark Knight back in 2008. Of those movies, Barbie is the only one that's not part of an actual live-action movie franchise, with the others being Aquaman, The Dark Knight Rises, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (which ed $1bn thanks to a 2020 re-release), Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows - Part 2, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, and Joker (which technically exists outside the DCEU, but released alongside it and as part of the wider DC movie and Batman franchise history).
Barbie is of course an historic IP, and has had several animated movies (albeit straight-to-video/streaming), but has never been a true theatrical franchise, nor a live-action one. It was untested in such waters, and there are many ways Barbie could have gone wrong given it did - at least before the involvement of Margot Robbie and Greta Gerwig - sound like a sign of Hollywood running out of ideas. To turn that into such a massive success - especially in an era so reliant on franchises - makes it an incredible achievement.
Barbie's $1 Billion Success Means It Will Absolutely Become A WB Franchise
Although Barbie's ending doesn't scream sequel setup, and Barbie 2 hasn't yet been confirmed, it's all but certain that it will happen in some way. Whether Greta Gerwig and Margot Robbie will return is to be seen, but there's no way WB and Mattel won't want to build on Barbie's box office success - and the franchise record only proves it. Despite its success coming, in part, from the fact it feels like such an original movie and doesn't have any franchise baggage, the contradiction of that is it will inevitably lead to it becoming one.
WB's biggest box office successes are built on franchises - namely DC movies, Harry Potter/Wizarding World, and Lord of the Rings. The first of those is undergoing a major reboot and has had a string of box office disappointments; the same is true of the second, with Fantastic Beasts having failed and a TV remake in the works at Max; the third's immediate future is also on TV, although there are more movie plans too, but nothing too concrete in of live-action. Put simply, WB will want more franchise opportunities, and that now means more Barbie.
