The far right is constantly warning that if you go woke, you’ll go broke. But when it comes to the new Barbie movie, they couldn’t be more wrong.
Barbie, which follows Barbie (Margot Robbie) and Ken (Ryan Gosling) as they leave Barbie Land to explore the real world, earned a whopping $162 million in its opening weekend, Variety reported Monday. This is the biggest opening weekend of the year, and the biggest opening weekend for a female director ever.
The film had already made $22.3 million at the domestic box office from Thursday previews, the biggest preview haul of the summer. It blew the previous record of $17.5 million (made by Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3 in May) out of the water.
I think its success has more to do with how they’ve broadened the appeal of a Barbie movie by being critical of it in a way that feels honest and appeals to people that like Barbie as well as those that hate Barbie. I am not Barbie’s main demo nor have I ever been a fan of anything related to Barbie, but the buzz got me to skeptically see it opening weekend, and I was absolutely shocked at how much I enjoyed it from start to finish.
Writer/Director Greta Gerwig and producer Margot Robbie should get most of the credit for how the movie turned out, but Matel should get some credit too for allowing these women to embrace the complicated and flawed nature of the IP with the story that they have told.