‘Barbie’ Passes ‘Dark Knight’ As Warners’ Biggest Movie Ever

For months and months, Barbie has been pitted against Christopher Nolan’s Oppenheimer. Coming out on the same summer weekend, people got weirdly obsessed with “Barbenheimer” and who would earn the most money at the box office.

Long before the films opened, it became very clear that Barbie would open bigger than Oppenheimer, and it did. But even though Oppenheimer has also had an outstanding run in theaters for a three hour drama about a guy building a bomb, Barbie has not only outgrossed it, it has now officially surpassed Nolan’s biggest movie ever — which also happens to be the biggest film ever released by Warner Bros. prior to 2023: The signature DC superhero movie, The Dark Knight.

Warner Bros.

At present, Barbie has made $537.5 million at the domestic box office, a bit better than The Dark Knight’s $536 million. That’s still far from the biggest movie ever in the U.S., though. The top movie of all time domestically is Star Wars: The Force Awakens which earned an incredible $936 million in the U.S. alone. (Avengers: Endgame, Spider-Man: No Way Home, Avatar, Top Gun: Maverick, Black Panther, Avatar: The Way of Water, Avengers: Infinity War, Titanic, and Jurassic World have all outgrossed Barbie too.... for now.) Previously, Barbie beat another record held by The Dark Knight, the highest gross for a movie on a Monday.

How high will Barbie go? The film continues to dominate theaters; it was the number one movie in America last weekend a month after it first opened, and it’s already grossed more than $1.19 billion worldwide. But it does seem to be slowing down a little. Still, beating the Batman at anything is an impressive achievement. That dude is the world’s greatest detective and martial artist.