Report: Zoomers And Millennials Drive Massive Box Office For ‘Barbie’

John F. Trent |

Jul 24, 2023

MARGOT ROBBIE as Barbie in Warner Bros. Pictures’ “BARBIE,” a Warner Bros. Pictures release.

A new report reveals that Millennial and Zoomer moviegoers drove a massive domestic opening weekend for Greta Gerwig’s Barbie film.

According to The-Numbers, the film had an opening weekend of $162 million domestically and another $182 million internationally for a global gross of $344 million. It also sold 15.5 million tickets domestically.

With its opening weekend, the film firmly planted itself as one of the top 10 grossing films of the entire year. It currently sits in 8th place behind The Super Mario Bros. Movie, Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse, Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3, The Little Mermaid, Avatar: The Way of Water, Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania, and John Wick: Chapter 4.

As for who was going to see the film, Box Office Pro reports that 81% of moviegoers were younger than 35. That beat out other female-led films such as Wonder Woman, Captain Marvel, Beauty and the Beast, and even The Little Mermaid.

The Little Mermaid and Beauty and the Beast were the closest to Barbie. The Little Mermaid saw 75% of its moviegoers below 35 while Beauty and the Beast saw 73% of its moviegoers below the age of 35.

The film also was also seen predominantly by females, but the percentage might not be as high as one might expect. Only 65% of Barbie’s audience was female. That’s actually lower than The Walt Disney Company’s The Little Mermaid, which saw 68% of its moviegoers being female.

It did outperform both Captain Marvel and Wonder Woman as well as Beauty and the Beast. Captain Marvel only saw females make up 45% of its audience. Wonder Woman’s audience was 52% female, and Beauty and the Beast’s was 60%.

Aside from age and gender, Box Office Pro reports the 56% of moviegoers were white, 23% Hispanic, 10% black, and 7% Asian.

As for the top highest-grossing theaters eight of the top 10 were either in Los Angeles or New York. The theaters included: AMC Burbank Los Angeles, AMC Empire New York, AMC Lincoln Square New York, Regal Irvine Spectrum Los Angeles, AMC Grove Los Angeles, AMC Century City Los Angeles, AMC Boston Common, AMC Disney Springs Orlando, Regal Edwards Greenway Grand Palace Houston, and Regal Union Square New York.

Box office analyst OMB Reviews predicts that if word of mouth does not turn on Barbie the film could gross $1 billion and be the second film to reach that mark in 2023, The Super Mario Bros. Movie being the first and bringing in $1.3 billion.

He relayed, “[Barbie’s] not going to be a flop. It’s made way too much money in its opening weekend for that to even be a possibility. So the only thing that I can really hope for — and this comes more to a hope in humanity versus anything else — is that the word of mouth on this movie finally spreads. People start to wake up to the fact that the marketing is incredibly deceptive and is not actually telling you what the movie itself actually is, and we see a massive drop off.”

“But right now, I will have to say I don’t suspect that to happen,” he continued. “Who knows. If it does happen I will be very, very happy. I will be very, very, very, very pleased, but if it doesn’t I can’t say I’ll be surprised. And if it doesn’t, a billion dollars is on the table then for a movie like this.”

He the posited, “And Lord knows what kind of message what kind of message that’s going to send the studios. It’s not going to be, ‘Hey, let’s make female-centric movies that are fun that people can enjoy’, but ‘Hey, let’s make a bunch of radical third wave feminist narratives and maybe disguise the movies just like we did with Barbie and that’s the way we can ultimately be effective.’

He concludes, “Who’s to say exactly what’s going to happen, but these are the numbers as they currently stand.”